


The Thing Called Future

by tunemyart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-03 00:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 56,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: Emma might be having visions of her death, but they definitely don’t have anything to do with Regina, okay? Now if she could only convince herself, she might be getting somewhere.Alternate Season 6A. There are two versions of Regina running around town, Emma’s got possession of the Fates’ shears and is still dealing with the fallout of having been the Dark One, and the Charmings have had the gall to bring up the Final Battle when everybody else had forgotten about it. Regina and Emma haven't had a real conversation since they were last in New York, but they can totally deal with fate pitting them against each other again, right?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TuuPii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TuuPii/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Thing Called Future [Art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15671583) by [TuuPii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TuuPii/pseuds/TuuPii). 



> A HUGE thank you to 1) the SQSN mods - I have no idea how you manage all this - 2) my cheerleaders Gina and Peggy (and my "unofficial" cheerleader Nathaniel!), and 3) my amazing artist TuuPii!! This has been one blast of a ride and I kind of can't believe I'm done writing this story?
> 
> In my very loose version of Season 6 canon, the only things you need to remember for the purposes of this story are 1) Emma voluntarily went to therapy because she was terrified that Regina (Split!Queen edition) was the mysterious figure killing her in her visions, and 2) the Evil Queen impersonated Archie to manipulate Emma into telling her family (including Regina) about those visions. This picks up immediately after that scene in 6x05.

Moodily, Emma kicked a stone as the path ahead became dotted with headstones, the Mills family mausoleum looming ahead.

 

“Freaking Archie,” she muttered. Apparently doctor-patient confidentiality meant absolutely nothing. Either that or, as the Savior, she was fair game for everybody. Maybe some combination of the two. 

 

She’d spent the past hour trying to keep her parents, son, and boyfriend from freaking out over the same visions that she was one hundred percent for sure still freaking out about herself, and trying really hard not to think about the dawning horror on Regina’s face when she realized what it meant that she wasn’t in them. 

 

There was a reason she hadn’t wanted to tell anybody about her visions - many reasons! Many, many good reasons! - and if she was being honest, it wasn’t the  _ only  _ reason she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about her visions, but it was definitely up there. 

 

She’d given Regina the requested hour for her to work off some of that frenetic worry, but had come to the realization on the walk over here that that was exactly the wrong thing to have done. Regina didn’t work off her worry; she worked  _ up  _ her worry. Emma would be lucky if she didn’t find Regina whipped so far into a froth that she was incapable of speaking in anything but borderline-cruel one-liners while her hands shook between potion ingredients.

 

The descent into the vault was a familiar one at this point, and she absently passed her hand over Henry Senior’s tomb as she stepped beneath it, the sound of beating hearts filling the space in the background of her mind that she’d started to think of as comforting when she managed to forget what it was.

 

Sure enough, there was Regina, eyes gleaming and motions manic as she stirred whatever potion she’d decided on cobbling together. Yup, Emma thought, starting forward guiltily. Definitely should have let her do anything but this.

 

“Are you loitering like the street urchin you are or are you going to come make yourself useful?” Regina said without looking up. Emma winced.

 

“Guess it depends on what making myself useful entails,” she said, stopping in front of Regina’s workstation. 

 

“Well, as long as you’ve still mastered the skill of drinking, we should be in good shape.”

 

Emma rolled her eyes. “Ooooh-kay,” she said. “I mean, we could do this all day too, but I’d really rather not.”

 

Finally, Regina looked up, all self-righteous innocence. “What?”

 

“This,” Emma said, gesturing between them. “You talking to me like you can’t stand me.”

 

Regina’s lip curled. “Is this there you tell me how we’ve come too far for that?”

 

“Is this where you pretend we haven’t?” Emma asked, leaning forward challengingly.

 

“You tell me,  _ Miss Swan _ .”

 

“Ugh,” Emma muttered, letting her have this one. “And they tell me I’ve got walls.”

 

Regina didn’t respond to that beyond an annoyed glance, and against her better judgment Emma let her work in silence, watching her as she worked.

 

“What is it? The potion?” Emma asked when the silence got too thick, and Regina was clearly stewing in it.

 

“Locator spell,” Regina said. “You want to find Aladdin to figure out how to stay alive, we’re going to find Aladdin.”

 

Emma tilted her head in surprise. “That’s not what I was expecting, but great.”

 

“What were you expecting, then?”

 

“I dunno,” Emma said. “Something more protective, I guess. Defensive.” Honestly, she hadn’t realized Regina had had any ideas at all when she’d fled the loft, and had figured she’d be working on something a little more standard to calm herself down.

 

“Clearly that isn’t going to be enough if you die in your vision,” Regina said.

 

“Couldn’t hurt,” Emma said, shrugging, but Regina bristled and met her gaze, clearly ready for the fight she’d been spoiling for.

 

“I’m sorry, are you displeased with the way I’m trying to help you save your life?” she asked, setting down her mortar and pestle with a little more force than was necessary.

 

“No, I - “

 

“Then try to show a little more gratitude!”

 

“What is your problem, Regina?”

 

“My  _ problem  _ is that there is apparently some impending version of reality where I’m not fighting at your side when someone kills you!” Regina said. 

 

Emma wouldn’t have been surprised to see accidental fireballs coming her way at close range with the way Regina was gesturing, and was already on the defensive to snuff them out if she absolutely had to. 

 

“Hey, I’m a little busy in that vision trying to, you know, not die,” she said. “Maybe I don’t see you there because you’re not with the others? Like you’re coming in from another direction?”

 

Regina’s glare was withering. “Stop trying to placate me.”

 

“Then stop  _ asking _ me to placate you!” Emma said, and Regina had the grace to look slightly abashed. “Look, there are a million reasons why you might not be there. You could be dealing with another magical problem, you could be trying to help me figure out how to beat this guy somewhere else, you could be fighting your evil doppelganger, you could be sleeping because nobody called you and I was tied up!”

 

“Why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself and not me?” Regina muttered, not unreasonably, because Emma had been playing the game of  _ figure out where Regina could be that’s not under the cloak  _ ever since she’d had the vision the second time and confirmed for herself that she wasn’t in it.

 

“I don’t know, maybe you’re just trying to pick holes in everything,” Emma said. “In case you haven’t noticed, this vision isn’t exactly about you.”

 

“No, it’s about you and your death,” Regina replied tartly. “I’ve managed to stay focused on that just fine, thank you. You can drop the condescension.”

 

“Right back at you, your majesty,” Emma snapped. “Look - I’m just trying to figure out how to stop this from happening. If you can help me do that, we can avoid this whole thing altogether.”

 

“Of course. Since now Archie has spilled your secret and you don’t have a choice.”

 

“What the fuck, Regina, of course I have a choice,” Emma said, already exhausted.  _ This  _ was why she hadn’t wanted to spill her secret in the first place. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

“To try to save my feelings. Clearly not because you actually trust me, or you would have told me this when you first started having the visions,” Regina countered, and Emma winced, because she was at least a little right. “Whatever else was going on back at the loft, you seemed pretty confident of where I was in them.” Her face was a mask when she met Emma’s eyes, and Emma’s insides curled at the sight and at the words being out in the open. 

 

“I didn’t say - “ Emma began.

 

“You didn’t have to,” Regina said. “And all you’ve offered me since is half-baked excuses you’ve invented for yourself about why I might not be the figure under the hood.”

 

“Fine! Maybe it’s like you said and you actually  _ are  _ already dead - “

 

“Thanks for the cheery assessment - “

 

“Well, what do you want from me?” Emma asked, voice rising. “To tell you it’s not you?”

 

“Yes,  _ yes _ !” Regina cried, advancing on her, desperate and raw in a way she never would have been before splitting the Evil Queen away from her. “That’s exactly what I want!”

 

“I don’t know that,” Emma said, because she didn’t, because she was so afraid of it she’d spent every waking moment avoiding the possibility of it since Regina had told her over coffee that the Evil Queen was back and jumpstarted her into another vision, hands shaking, blade between her ribs. Archie, goddammit, Archie at least hadn’t made her spill that secret.

 

“How can you not know?” Regina said, hands grasping futilely in front of her. “After all we’ve been through together, do you honestly believe there is a part of me that wants you dead?”

 

“I mean - “ Emma stuttered. “The Evil Queen - “

 

“The Evil Queen split from me three weeks ago,” Regina said. “Do you honestly believe there was a part of me  _ three weeks ago  _ that wanted you dead?”

 

“Maybe a little?” Emma was lowkey hoping that Regina would take the bait, calm this down, segue smoothly into another of her endless and harmless strings of quips that yes, sometimes she’d like to throttle Emma for being too unapplied to her studies, too stubborn, too willful, too noble, too protective, too self-sacrificing, and they could move on like this had never happened.

 

But Regina stepped forward again into Emma’s space, her eyes dark and dangerous, her manic energy coiling and compressing into a stillness that vibrated in every line of her body, calling to Emma’s in a way Emma’s body instinctively answered, shifting forward to meet her unconsciously, inexorably. It was like something inside her was waking up that had been asleep for so long she’d forgotten about it. 

 

How had she forgotten about this? Regina’s stare was magnetic, electric, breathtaking. Emma couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to.

 

“Not  _ one - single - part _ ,” Regina said.

“Okay,” Emma whispered, watching Regina’s face crumple at that single word. “Okay.”

 

“I couldn’t,” Regina said, pleading again. “Emma, do you hear me? I  _ couldn’t. _ ”

 

Emma knew. They’d long since passed the point that they’d worried if they could trust each other with their lives - Emma couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought about Regina’s location, let alone her intentions, before throwing herself head first into a fight. Even if Emma’s magic didn’t sense her as expected at her side or back, letting loose with her own magic and a  _ slightly  _ worrisome smile, Emma would never doubt she was nearby and fighting alongside her. 

 

The whole Evil Queen reappearing thing had really been throwing Emma for a loop, and Emma guiltily realized that she hadn’t been alone in that. There were dark circles under Regina’s eyes, and her hands were jittery with nervous energy in a way that wasn’t completely attributable to this moment. But there was also a terror there that Emma knew better than to call her out on - that for all her sureness that she could not harm Emma, that day would come and find some version of her under that cloak, sword in hand, blade through Emma’s ribs.

 

And the worst thing was - Emma couldn’t exactly say with ringing honesty that she wasn’t terrified of the same thing. 

 

_ All we’ve been through together  _ could really mean anything, but she knew what it was that Regina meant. She’d spent months trying to forget it because of everything that had come after it, and how hard it was to think about, and how different she was now that it was all over from the Emma that had thrown a dagger into all the darkness of all the universes and called it down on her head so that it would lift from Regina’s. That Emma felt like a stranger, but she remembered her still, and how it had felt to look out from her eyes, the darkness swirling furiously around her as Regina had stared at her, paralyzed.

 

Regina couldn’t know how close Emma’s visions put her to that moment, darkness and her death and her family and the  _ same fucking spot _ on Main Street, because Emma hadn’t told her. 

 

_ (“When you say, “my family”, Emma, who do you mean?” Archie had asked her once, recently. _

 

_ “Uh, what do you mean?” _

 

_ “Have you noticed that you have a tendency to split them out? You say, “my family and Hook”. Even in this case, in your visions, when your mother isn’t there and it’s just your father, Henry, and  _ _ Hook.” _

 

_ Emma had shrugged. Archie sensed her discomfort, not pressing on the Hook issue; but because he was Archie, he moved on to a different one. _

 

_ “I’ve noticed that when you say “my family”, you tend to include your parents, Henry, and Regina,” he said. “When you say “my family and Hook,” Regina is usually still part of that group.” _

 

_ Of course Emma had noticed it. Emma had once spent weeks agonizing over whether it was worse to inadvertently bucket Regina out or deal with a Regina who didn’t want to be bucketed in, until she’d said  _ fuck it _ and just started doing it; and when no one, including Regina, had said a single word about it, doing so had become second nature. Emma had noticed - she just hadn’t thought about it in about two years. _

 

_ “What about it?” Emma muttered. “She’s my kid’s mom. She’s my friend. She’s my mom’s… whatever.” _

 

_ Archie smiled kindly. “I guess what I’m trying to ask is, how aware are you that you’re including Regina when you say “my family”? And if that what’s really bothering you about these visions - that Regina isn’t there?” _

 

_ “I mean - “ Emma stumbled. “Of course it bothers me that she’s not there. Obviously. I’m here talking about it.” _

 

_ “You were actually here to talk your worry that Regina was the cloaked figure that you’re fighting.” _

 

_ “Fine. I mean, semantics, but whatever.” _

 

_ Mercifully, Archie once again didn’t press. _

 

_ “Emma, I wonder if you’re here because you think it would be better to have her in the picture, even if she’s the figure that kills you, than not at all?” _

 

_ “So you think it might be her under there, too?” _

 

_ “I didn’t say that. I said that whether or not she is the figure you’re fighting, it’s significant that your mind has placed her there.” _

 

_ “But why would she be fighting me?” Emma asked. _

 

_ “I think the question, Emma,” Archie said softly, “is why would  _ you  _ be fighting  _ her _?”) _

 

Regina’s eyes were still wide and pleading in a way that made Emma’s heart clench in panic, because for much as they trusted each other, they didn’t  _ do  _ this. Emma could count on a little over one hand the number of times Regina had chosen to make herself emotionally vulnerable in front of her because she needed something from Emma, and it had never been anything like this. 

 

“Emma?” Regina pressed, desperate, and Emma couldn’t deny her. 

 

“Yeah,” she lied. “I know.”

 

She didn’t know if Regina had registered the lie. Her eyes had gone closed off and shuttered, which gave Emma the uneasy feeling that she’d been seen through uncomfortably easily. 

 

“Well,” said Regina. “I guess that’s that. Drink up and let’s go see if you can find Aladdin.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

They found Aladdin. They also got more than they bargained for in the shape of innocuous-looking golden shears that Emma twirled nervously in her pocket for the duration of the walk back to the loft. 

 

“Just a precaution, in case you decide you need it,” Aladdin had said when he’d come out of hiding. “You sound like you could use them a lot more than I could. Look me up if you decide you want to know how actually use them.”

 

Regina hadn’t said a word since they’d parted ways with him after emerging into the sunlight - no doubt he was reuniting with Jasmine about now, and good for him - but Emma had never exactly been comforted by Regina’s silence, especially after confronting something as big as this. 

 

“You’re not planning on using those, are you?” Regina asked, breaking their silence. 

 

Compulsively, Emma’s fingers tightened around the cool metal in her pocket. “Uh - not right now, no.”

 

“Does that mean you’re planning on using them in the future?” Regina asked evenly. 

 

“I don’t know,” Emma said, scowling a little. “I just got them. Give a girl time to process.”

 

“Emma,” Regina said. “I know you’ve been struggling recently with the whole Savior thing, and this must seem like a really attractive option to you. But the fact is that you don’t know what the ramifications of using those things might be.”

 

“You’ve got some idea though,” Emma said, turning to face her. “It sounds like, anyway.”

 

Regina hesitated. “I don’t know anything for sure. But if you’re trying to avoid your death in those visions, there is absolutely nothing other than wishful thinking saying that using those shears will help you do it.”

 

“How did you know I was thinking that?” Emma asked, flabbergasted, and Regina rolled her eyes. 

 

“Please. I know you, Emma,” she said. “This wouldn’t be the first time you tried to sacrifice part of yourself if you believed it would prevent a worse outcome.”

 

“Like my death?” Emma asked bluntly. “Look, I don’t think I’m exactly being unreasonable about this.”

 

“Before you have all the facts, yes, you are!” Regina said. “You don’t even know that your in that fight in your visions because you’re the Savior.”

 

“Why else would I be?” Emma asked, not without some bitterness. “Isn’t that why I’m in every fight around here?” 

 

Regina didn’t answer, and only cast her a long sideways glance. 

 

“What?” Emma asked.

 

“You really believe that this is fated, don’t you?” Regina asked, sounding so genuinely concerned it stopped Emma in her tracks. 

 

“What, you don’t?”

 

“That’s different.  _ I’m  _ different,” Regina insisted, catching Emma’s glance. “I  _ am _ . I might not like to admit it, but I’ve always believed in all of this - fate, destiny, prophecy. We all do, any of us who came from the Enchanted Forest. That’s how things worked. I might have railed against it, but doing so cost me a lot, and cost a lot of others far more. You, though…” she trailed off, and Emma shifted awkwardly, knowing she was thinking about a different Emma Swan, brash and twenty-eight years old and Regina’s curse in shambles around her, her father’s sword in hand and not a single thought towards cutting the Evil Queen down with it.  

 

“I guess five years of this crazy’s rubbed off on me,” Emma said. 

 

“Or you think it would be awfully convenient now that you’ve got those shears to believe in fate,” Regina countered. 

 

“Whether or not it’s  _ convenient  _ isn’t the point,” Emma said. “Is there really anything else my visions could be?”

 

“Of course,” said Regina. “Someone could have planted them in your mind. You could be under the effect of some magical object. They could be nothing more than the product of your own mind. I suspect Doctor Hopper would have something to say about that.”

 

Emma ignored the last pointed comment and focused on her first suggestion. “Whoa, wait. You think someone might be actively sabotaging my mind?”

 

“I don’t know,” Regina said. “It’s possible, is all I said.”

 

“You don’t think - the Evil Queen - “

 

“I don’t know,” Regina repeated, sharply. Emma briefly wondered if she was in for more of Regina’s wounded eyes and another reminder that the Evil Queen had only split from Regina three weeks ago - she might have even deserved it for jumping right to the possibility she had - but Regina only sighed in surrender. “I suppose it’s something we can’t discount. When did the visions start?”

 

“Uh,” Emma said, wincing in anticipation. “Three weeks ago.”

 

If possible, Regina’s face grew more pinched. 

 

“Okay, you’re starting to scare me,” Emma said. “I don’t know if I’m more afraid that you apparently have the ability to plant visions in people’s heads or that by your own logic, you apparently wanted to do it to me three weeks ago.”

 

“I didn’t,” Regina said, starting to walk again, leaving Emma to catch up to her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just don’t know what she’s up to. Or what she wants. Which is frankly the more terrifying question.”

 

“Well,” Emma asked practically, “what did  _ you  _ want three weeks ago?”

 

Regina’s lips tightened, and she didn’t answer, keeping up her brisk pace. 

 

“Now you’re really scaring me,” Emma muttered, but let it go. “Fine. All I need to know is - and  _ please  _ don’t take this the wrong way - but do you think she’s going to attack us?”

 

“You? Henry? Your parents? No,” Regina said decisively. 

 

“Hook?” Emma asked the obvious next question, eyebrow raised. 

 

“You might need to keep an eye on him,” Regina admitted. “I don’t think she’ll go out of her way to hurt him. And she definitely won’t go through you to do so.”

 

“That’s... something, I guess,” Emma said. She was tempted to ask for the millionth time what the issue was between her and Hook, but for the millionth time, decided she really didn’t want to open that can of worms. 

 

“My point is,” Regina continued, “that you can’t trust that your visions are even real, however you want to define ‘real’, let alone that they’re fated to come to pass.”

 

“And so I shouldn’t use the shears,” Emma finished for her.

 

“Right,” said Regina, giving her a sideways glance, apparently unconvinced that her point had really sunk in. 

 

And with good reason: Emma wasn’t convinced. Regina was right about one thing - using the shears was a really, really attractive option, in a way that Emma hadn’t recognized until she was suddenly given a choice for the first time in longer than she could remember. And if it did end up being as neat and simple as Emma being able to use the shears to end her visions? All the better.

 

But more than anything else, Emma was unconvinced because Regina was obviously hiding something. Anyone who hadn’t seen her just an hour ago in her vault might have missed it - if Emma hadn’t been there herself, she might have missed it - but the sensory image of Regina pleading before her, begging her to believe anything but that some version of Regina was even capable of killing her, was seared into Emma’s memory in a way that still had her tender and unwilling to prod at it. 

 

That hadn’t been the reaction of a woman who didn’t believe that Emma’s visions weren’t real - it was the reaction of a woman who believed it so deeply in the core of her being that she was desperate for Emma to disbelieve it for the both of them. 

 

Regina’s face now in the bright light of late afternoon was a cool, calm, and collected: a perfect mask. Emma knew better than to take her words as anything but an extension of that mask. Part of her wanted to bring it up, to challenge her - but the greater part of her was relieved to find that they’d arrived at her parents’ building and their time cut short.

 

“What are you going to tell them?” Regina asked as they entered the building and started up the stairs. 

 

Emma shrugged, not really having figured that part out herself. “That we found Aladdin but no leads on the vision?”

 

“Emma,” Regina said, turning and stopping her on the first landing. “You’re not going to tell them about the shears? I think that’s something they’d want to know about.”

 

“Look, I’ve already had enough of people barging into my life and forcing me to spill my secrets today,” Emma snapped. “It’s bad enough I apparently can’t trust Archie. Are you telling me I can’t trust you either?”

 

“Of course not,” Regina snapped back, affronted. “I’m just saying, they might have some valid opinions you might find helpful in making your decision.”

 

“You mean they might be able to talk me out of using them,” Emma corrected her. Regina didn’t look away, but didn’t deny it either. “Why is this such a big deal to you? I meant it when I said I haven’t made a decision. I’ve had them for literally two seconds. I don’t even know what to think yet. But I’d appreciate the time to figure that out before other people barge in and tell me what they think I should think.”

 

Regina pressed her lips together, looking as though she wanted to say something she was holding back. Emma waited, but all she finally said was, “I suppose that’s fair enough.”

 

“Hey, if it makes you feel better, I promise to give you a shot to talk me out of it if I decide to use them, okay?” Emma said as they reached the last landing.

 

But Emma had no more turned the handle to the apartment than Snow had grabbed at her wrist, tugging her through with a relieved, “Oh thank God.”

 

“Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?” Emma asked, looking around the room. Everyone was still present and accounted for - Snow, Hook, Henry, David, herself and Regina - save Jasmine, who was presumably reuniting with Aladdin.

 

“Regina, were you on the street below us about an hour ago?” Snow asked, ignoring her, and Regina shook her head, eyebrow raised at the urgency of her tone. 

 

“No, I was in my vault until Emma got there, and we didn’t come back around this way until just now,” she said. “Why? What’s wrong?”

 

“While you were gone, the Evil Queen’s been prowling around,” David explained. 

 

“What, here?” Emma asked, exchanging a glance with Regina, who had gone tense. “When?”

 

“Just after you left,” Snow said. “We tried to call you both.”

 

Regina pulled out her phone, and Emma followed suit, finding eleven missed calls from various members of her family. “I guess I forgot to take mine off silent,” said Emma. 

 

“I put mine on silent when I got to my vault,” offered Regina, displaying her own log of eight missed calls. “It’s possible we just didn’t hear anything. But hold on a second - are you saying it looked like it actually could have been me?”

 

“No dresses and crazy hair?” Emma asked, one hand vaguely waving over her own breasts. Regina cast her a withering glance, and Emma, catching herself, tried valiantly not to blush. 

 

“Unless you’ve got another doppelganger running around, no,” said Snow. “She was dressed… well, pretty much like you are now. Maybe a little more classic Mayor Mills.”

 

“So, what - pantsuits and pencil skirts?” Emma asked before thinking about it, this time earning her a look from both Regina and Hook. 

 

“I didn’t realize you’d paid such close attention to the changes in my wardrobe,” Regina remarked, and Emma had the good sense to bite back both a retort and some side eye of her own, because while Regina definitely had noticed, at least in their early days, she didn’t really want to discuss it in front of her boyfriend. 

 

Thankfully Regina continued before anyone could comment beyond a raised eyebrow from Snow. “So you knew it wasn’t me based on how she was dressed? What was she doing? If she’s here she must be after something.”

 

“She didn’t really do anything,” David said. “Henry saw her looking up at us through the window, but she never came up.”

 

Regina’s suddenly horrified gaze had swung around to Henry, who stepped forward to reassure her. “I’m fine, mom,” he said. “Really. I don’t think she wanted anything. She just kind of stood there for a while, which I thought was weird since you’d told Emma to meet you in your vault.”

 

“She always wants something, Henry,” Regina said grimly. “And she came here to get it, which is what’s worrying me.”

 

“What is it then?” Hook asked. “Surely you must have some idea.”

 

Regina shook her head. “I - I don’t know. She didn’t hurt you? Didn’t threaten you? Did anyone try to engage with her?”

 

“Aye. Or at least, I tried,” Hook said. “She magicked herself away before I got there. The lad saw.”

 

“Wait - why would you think she would hurt them?” Emma asked Regina. Five heads swiveled around to face her in disbelief, but it was the surprise on Regina’s face warring with her disbelief that had Emma’s attention. 

 

“Emma,” Snow said patiently, but also as though she were slightly worried for Emma’s sanity. “You do remember the Evil Queen’s history with our family?” 

 

“Well, yeah. Obviously,” said Emma. “But…” 

 

Regina’s words in the vault rang in Emma’s ears:  _ Do you honestly believe there was a part of me three weeks ago that wanted you dead? _

 

“I’m just saying, the Evil Queen has been Regina for a long time,” Emma finished weakly, and watched Regina’s face grow shuttered at her words. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”

 

“Because we can’t believe you trust her,” Hook said bluntly. “You know better than this, Emma.”

 

“That’s a big leap to make,” Emma said. “She hasn’t done anything yet. We don’t know what she’s after.”

 

Regina herself was being awfully quiet. Emma snuck another glance at her when she couldn’t help herself anymore, and found Regina staring at her like she couldn’t decide if Emma actually _was_ this much of an idiot, or if she was just trying to earn points back for having dared to believe that Regina might be the hooded figure in her vision. 

 

It wasn’t much of a contest for anyone else. “Regina’s right - it’s never anything good,” David said, as if he were very concerned for her sanity. “Considering she used to be her, you’d think you could trust that at least, Emma.”

 

“Which brings us to another point,” Snow said gently. “Have you considered that your visions only started after the Evil Queen arrived?” 

 

“No, I really hadn’t,” Emma said, lying through her teeth and trying, once again, not to look towards Regina.

 

“Well, just think about it,” said Snow. “Don’t you think it’s a bit coincidental that these things happened at the same time? That the Evil Queen is only appearing just now?” 

 

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think,” said Emma. “I haven’t even seen the Evil Queen yet.”

 

“Emma, you’re clearly uncomfortable talking about the visions, and we understand that,” David said, placing a hand on her shoulder, and Emma twitched. “But we’re your family. We’re here to help.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” Emma said, trying to ignore the panic tightening her chest uncomfortably. In her peripheral vision, Regina moved toward her just as she shook David’s hand off her shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean I need your help right this very second.”

 

“Then when?” Hook asked. “Love, you said you die in those visions. How much time do you have left where we can help?”

 

“ _ Enough _ ,” Regina broke in, for which Emma was immediately grateful. “Let’s just all take a step back, shall we?”

 

“No,” Hook retorted. “And if you’re really her friend, you won’t either.”

 

Regina’s eyes narrowed and she started to advance toward him, and Emma yelled, “Okay, okay, Regina’s right. Can we all just calm down and maybe talk about this when we’re all freaking out less?”

 

“I think Hook and your mother have a point, Emma,” said David apologetically. “We need to talk about this now. There’s a reason the Evil Queen chose to show herself now - and maybe she even knew that you and Regina weren’t here.”

 

“So we need to figure that reason out,” Emma agreed. “I’m with you.”

 

“But if it has anything to do with your vision, I want to know,” David continued, prompting nods from the others. 

 

“You think I don’t?” Emma said. The impulse to laugh a little hysterically was bubbling up in her in the face of the wall of earnest concern closing in around her. 

 

“I think you might not,” said Snow, glancing toward Regina in a way that made Regina’s face harden. “And I think that’s understandable, too.”

 

“Okay,  _ stop _ ,” said Emma. “We are not doing this right now. I’m sorry I said anything. I’m sorry most of all that Archie thought he had the right to come up here and spill my secrets for me.”

 

“Thank God he did! What if you’d never told us?” asked Hook.

 

“Then I’d never have told you!” Emma said, rounding on him. “And it would have been  _ my  _ decision!” 

 

It seemed to get through to him, if only for a split second. He raised his hands in surrender and took a step back, glancing over to David for sympathy even as he did, which made Emma  _ furious _ . And it was that that sent a bolt of white hot terror through her, the way her fury always did these days, for just long enough to startle her out of it and refocus on her mother. 

 

If anyone found it odd, they didn’t say so. Snow just looked grateful that Emma seemed to be ready to listen to her. 

 

“We get that after all you’ve been through, the idea of having to fight someone who looks like Regina is hard,” said Snow, doggedly trying to continue on while obviously trying to avoid saying the words “ _ being killed by someone who looks like Regina _ .” 

 

“I have no idea who’s under the cloak, mom,” Emma said. “I can’t see anything, let alone if they look like Regina.”

 

“But you have an idea,” Snow said. “You had an idea before Archie came here and said anything. I’d even guess that’s why - ”

 

“ _ Mom _ ,” Emma said loudly, aware only of how Regina had stiffened next to her. 

 

“I’m just saying - the prophecy that you would defeat the Evil Queen? It wasn’t ever actually fulfilled,” said Snow. “And maybe this is why.”

 

And here was a thing that was not a secret: Emma had never been comfortable with the idea of prophecy. 

 

She definitely hadn’t been onboard with the idea that she was destined to kill anybody - even if that person was a Grade A Superbitch who had framed her roommate-slash-mother for murder and was possibly embezzling from the government. Emma hadn’t thought about that prophecy in years, and certainly not since she and Regina had actually become friends, when Emma had spared it one last thought, that  _ this is it, this is how I defeat the Evil Queen.  _

 

It was the sort of ending that would have made Henry happy - the power of friendship, family, and love vanquishing the forces of darkness in a way that she’d usually say was way too poetic to ever be real - but in that moment, looking at Regina’s happy smirk over a root beer and feeling how it tugged at something behind her own heart, she was perilously close to accepting it.

 

That was -  _ if  _ she believed in prophecy.

 

Emma knew it wasn’t fair for her to believe in fate only when it suited her - when, in Regina’s words, it was  _ convenient  _ \- but dammit.  _ Dammit.  _ She’d been done with this. They’d all been fucking done with this. They’d moved on. They’d all found this weirdly cohesive family and had been letting it settle around them for two years. Maybe they weren’t deliriously  _ happy,  _ not in the way her parents used the word, but it had been working in a way Emma hadn’t ever had the luxury of experiencing. 

 

Emma looked around now, finding Snow’s self-righteous surety, David’s soft concern, Hook’s anger-driven fear, Henry’s brooding discomfort, Regina’s stoic mask.  

 

“You believe this?” Emma finally asked. “That my visions are - what - the Final Battle?”

 

Snow looked ready to cry at the fact that Emma was apparently finally listening. “Emma,  _ yes _ . I know it’s difficult.”

 

“It’s not  _ difficult _ ,” Emma said. “It’s crazy. Why would the prophecy even still apply? We’ve been past all that for years, unless I’ve missed something and you and Regina are seriously on the outs again. Regina’s  _ family _ , for God’s sake.”

 

Snow and David were looking at her pityingly, and even Regina didn’t speak up to defend herself. Henry crossed the room to put arm arm around her waist, and Regina gratefully leaned into the support. 

 

“I did set events into motion all those years ago which I think we’ll be feeling the echoes of for a long time to come, regardless of my intents or motives now,” Regina said quietly. 

 

_ Prophecy.  _ What was it with these people? Betrayed, Emma looked at Snow again. “Whatever Regina just said, sure, but your thing still doesn’t make sense. My visions end with me dying, in case you missed that. How does that sound like me being destined to defeat the Evil Queen to you?”

 

“A lot has happened since you came to town,” Snow suggested. “Maybe… some things happened that changed the outcome of that prophecy. And this is how it’s adjusting.”

 

Emma went cold with understanding. “You mean, when I became the Dark One,” she supplied for her mother’s euphemism. “You think that I - what? Ensured my own death? Because of some  _ prophecy?”  _

 

“Maybe your visions are a warning, not a prophecy,” David broke in hurriedly. “Maybe they’re telling you to do something to prevent that outcome.”

 

“Like what? Don’t get stabbed?” Emma asked sarcastically. But her hand ghosted over her pocket where the shears lay out of sight. Her eyes sought out Regina instinctively, which was a mistake - Regina hadn’t missed the subtle movement, and her own eyes were stony with disapproval. 

 

Emma looked away quickly and crossed her arms to give her hands something else to do. “Anyway, I thought we were all past believing that prophecies are real.”

 

“But prophecies are real,” her mother said earnestly, reaching out for her shoulder. “What else do you think brought you here on your twenty-eighth birthday?”

 

“My kid,” Emma said, finding Henry’s eyes across the room. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here, and she couldn’t blame him. “And I’m glad he did, but I’m also not going to go hunt down and kill the Evil Queen just because you’ve decided that that’s what the entire reason for my life is.”

 

“That’s not - ” Killian tried to start.

 

“That’s exactly what you’re telling me,” Emma retorted. “That the only reason I came to Storybrooke - the only reason for my  _ existence _ \- is down to the fact that somebody somewhere decided that I was meant to kill the Evil Queen.”

 

“It’s not that simple, Emma,” David said, probably because Snow looked close to tears again. “Of course that isn’t the reason for your existence, but you also can’t discount prophecy.”

 

Regina was still and quiet next to her. Emma imagined she was radiating  _ I told you so, I told you so, I told you so  _ on a constant loop, and it was enough to raise her hackles even further.

 

“So what? You’re going to tell me to go kill the Evil Queen anyway?” she asked.

 

“What else do you propose we do?” asked Hook. “Wasn’t that her majesty’s plan in the first place? Surely she hasn’t developed an issue with it now.”

 

“Things can change,” Emma said, ignoring the looks her parents were giving her. 

 

“Do they?” Hook asked, and turned to Regina. “Well?”

 

“I - “ Regina stuttered uncharacteristically. “I want to keep Emma safe.”

 

“Finally something we can agree on, then,” Hook said. “Emma, we aren’t going to wait around waiting for her to kill you.”

 

“Oh my God,” muttered Emma. “Whatever this is, this is  _ not  _ you guys helping me.” The panic was starting to surge and swirl in her chest again, and she was afraid for a minute that she was about to have another vision right there and then. It passed, thankfully, and she stumbled back toward the door, intent on getting out, getting away, whatever else was outside for her to deal with.

 

“Where are you going?” Snow called as Emma opened the door.

 

“Away from here!” Emma called back, and slammed the door behind her.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Emma had spent five minutes walking aimlessly when she finally spared a minute to be sorry she’d abandoned Regina to answer whatever questions the rest of them still no doubt had. She stopped then, finally, sinking onto the nearest bench in the park she was passing through and resting her head in her hands. 

 

She thought about pulling out her phone and giving Regina a call, but she knew there would be another thousand missed calls from Snow and Hook and David at the very least, and she wasn’t eager to deal with that just yet. If Regina wanted to find her, she usually could anyway. 

 

She thought briefly about going home, but it was too likely Killian would try to wait her out there, and she was too wired in any case to go back to those old dark rooms. At the moment, there was only one target for her rage that she could actually deal with, and so she stalked off with renewed purpose back toward Main Street. 

 

“Okay, Archie,” Emma said, pushing open the door to his office without announcing herself. “What the  _ fuck _ .”

 

Archie blinked at her from his desk. “Emma. What a pleasant surprise. Did you need to make an appointment?” 

 

“I need  _ you  _ to tell me why the hell you followed me to my parents’ and made me tell them about my visions,” Emma said. “I thought there was the whole thing about doctor patient confidentiality, and also  _ ethics _ , that said you can’t do that!” 

 

“What?” Archie said, finally starting to look concerned enough for Emma’s tastes. “I would never do anything like that, Emma. Your trust in me is the bedrock of the work we’re able to do in here.”

 

“I was there!” Emma said. “It was two hours ago! Don’t you dare try to gaslight me!”

 

Archie seemed speechless. “I - I don’t know what to say, except that I have been here, to the best of my knowledge, all day, and that I would never knowingly betray your or any other clients’ trust.”

 

Emma faltered. “You’ve been here all day?”

 

“Yes,” Archie said. “I can’t provide an alibi without giving up the name of the client I was with two hours ago, but I assure you, I was here.”

 

Emma stared, but couldn’t detect anything other than Archie’s typical earnest honesty. She sighed, and took a seat on the couch, leaning back and covering her face with her hands. 

 

“Emma?” Archie prompted. She could hear him getting up and making his way over to her, and she groaned. 

 

“I think you’re just a magnet for witches trying to fuck with me,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Not necessary,” Archie said. “I understand how betrayed you must be feeling what from you said. Someone - I take it the Evil Queen? - impersonated me and prompted you to tell your family about your visions?” 

 

“I think it’s a fair bet,” Emma said, finally sitting up and facing him. “Which means the Evil Queen now knows I’m having visions. Which might also have something to do with why she finally decided to show her face not long after.”

 

Archie looked troubled at that revelation. “Ah. There have been some new developments, then.”

 

Emma waved a tired hand. “I know I’m not here for a session.”

 

“Sounds like you could use an emergency ear anyway,” Archie said, smiling a little. “And I happen to be free.” 

 

“Can you just…” Emma started. “Do me a favor? And tell me something I told you last time, just so I know it’s you? Nothing about the visions.”

 

“Sure,” Archie said agreeably. “How about… you’re feeling lately like your role as the Savior has overtaken the rest of your life, all the way down to your relationship with Hook and your reluctance to move forward in it?”

 

“Good enough,” Emma said, feeling the weight of the shears in her pocket. 

 

“Anything more you want to say about that for now, or do you want to talk about what’s just happened?”

 

“Let’s come back to that,” Emma said, and immediately changed her mind. “Actually, no, let’s not. Do you remember this whole ridiculous prophecy thing from a long way back where the Savior would defeat the Evil Queen in the final battle?” 

 

Archie looked surprised at the turn in conversation, but nodded. “Yes, I do.”

 

“How big of a thing was that to people who aren’t me?”

 

“Ah - Emma,” Archie tried to deflect, and Emma waved a hand. 

 

“Pretty big then,” she surmised. 

 

Archie grimaced a little, presumably at having given himself away, and asked, “Why the question?” 

 

“My family thinks that since the Evil Queen is on the loose now, that’s what my visions are about,” she said. “I’m not sure how this even came up again - I haven’t thought about that prophecy in so long.”

 

“But now it has,” Archie said. “Is that what’s bothering you?” 

 

Emma sighed. “No,” she said, because it wasn’t the main thing that was bothering her. “Archie - last time I was here, when you said that the question was why would I be fighting Regina, what the  _ hell  _ did you mean?”

 

“Oh,” he said, eyes very round, like he finally understood something vital about her. Irritated, Emma wished he’d share it with her, but he continued on before she could comment. “Refresh my memory. This was about your vision, and your fear that it’s either Regina or the Evil Queen under the hood?”

 

“Yeah,” Emma said. “I asked why would she be fighting me, and you said that was the wrong question, that it was the other way around. What did you mean?”

 

“You have some doubts about whether your visions can be changed, and in fact whether or not they’re real at all, correct?”

 

“Right,” Emma agreed.

 

“Bear with me here,” Archie said. “I’m saying that in one way, it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re real. The part that you have power over is how you react to them - and how you’ve reacted so far is to be terrified that it’s Regina under the cloak, fighting you and eventually killing you in cold blood.”

 

“And?” 

 

“And that’s significant, because that’s the part that your mind is treating as the real threat here. Not the possible eventuality of your death, but a conflict with Regina that, in the language of your vision, is quite literally killing you.”

 

“You’re saying that the vision isn’t the problem here,” Emma asked doubtfully.

 

“I’m saying that the part you have control over is who you’ve actively reached for and put in the position of the person you see killing you,” said Archie, smiling kindly. “And that’s the part I can actually help you with. Visions of the future are a little out of my job description.” 

 

It… made sense. “Huh,” was all Emma could say. 

 

“I don’t want to push you before you’re ready,” Archie said. “I only know what you tell me, but I might guess that there’s some sort of unresolved conflict or trauma between you and Regina that’s really preying on you.” 

 

“And you can tell just from this?” Emma asked. 

 

“It’s not really a longshot given what I know of your history with her,” Archie pointed out mildly. “But even without my basic outsider’s knowledge of that history, yes.”

 

Panic, thick and dark, was starting to swirl around Emma again for absolutely no reason she could pinpoint. She clenched her fists and tried to push it away. “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said in a rush. 

 

“Okay,” Archie agreed. “Only if and when you’re ready.”

 

Emma exhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know why I’m reacting like this,” she said.

 

“It’s clear you’re very frightened of something,” Archie said. “Take your time. You don’t have to have the answers right now.”

 

“Then when?” Emma said, and flinched at her own echoing of Killian’s question to her. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just… really on edge.”

 

“That’s alright,” Archie said. “You’re doing great. Do you want to talk about something else?”

 

“Uh… I just…. Archie, do you believe in prophecy?” she asked. “Regina was saying everybody from your realm did,  _ does _ , I mean, and you just said the whole final battle thing was apparently a big deal for you - “ (here, Archie surreptitiously took off and cleaned his glasses) “ - so I mean, there all these things the visions  _ might  _ be. But I’m so aware right now that I am so far out of my depth here.”

 

“You’ve talked to Regina about this?” Archie asked, deflecting again, and not even  _ well _ . “What did she say?”

 

“She came up with a lot of things she doesn’t actually believe,” Emma said. “Because here’s the thing. Half my family believes that these visions are of the final battle, which doesn’t even make sense even if you do assume that it’s Regina under the hood, because in my visions, the person I’m fighting kills me, and in this prophecy or whatever, I kill Regina.”

 

Archie was quiet for a moment, waiting for anything else she had to say. When Emma fidgeted impatiently, he said, “I’m not completely clear on what it is you’re looking for from me, here.”

 

“Tell me it’s crazy! That I’m not the only one who thinks this is fucking nuts!” Emma said. 

 

“The entire rest of our conversation tells me that  _ you  _ believe it’s not crazy - at least, not completely,” Archie said. Emma started to protest, but Archie cut her off. “Emma, it doesn’t matter what I believe or not. It doesn’t matter what anyone else believes, either, including you. It doesn’t change that no one really knows what you’re experiencing. All you can really do is be prepared, and act on what you do know.”

 

It was familiar advice - she’d gotten it just an hour ago from Regina, trying to convince herself she didn’t believe in the vision, trying to convince Emma not to use the shears - but it didn’t make it less frustrating to get it for a second time or from her therapist, especially when Emma still felt it deep in her gut that whatever else was true - whether what she was seeing was actually somehow her future tied into an honest to God prophecy, or if it was just her subconscious fucking with her after all - her visions were absolutely about her being the Savior.

 

Which meant that she had the tools to change it, one way or another. 

 

“Yeah,” Emma agreed distantly, missing Archie’s look of concern. “Makes sense.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The sun was setting when she finally arrived home.

 

“Emma!” Killian said, opening the door before she could reach it, his phone in hand. “There you are. Where have you been?”

 

She stared at him. “Here I am. What’s wrong?”

 

“I thought you’d come back here when you left your parents’,” he said. “I didn’t find you and I thought…”

 

“You thought - what?” Emma asked. “Actually, no, never mind.”

 

“Where were you? Are you alright?” 

 

“I’m fine, I just needed some space, okay?”

 

A thing he didn’t seem to get. He was already shutting the door behind him and steering her back onto the porch. 

 

“Was it too much with the talk of the visions?” he asked. “I’m sorry we were pushing, but you don’t seem to understand - “

 

“I understand just fine, considering I’m the one  _ having  _ them,” Emma interrupted.

 

“You’re too close to it, which is why you didn’t tell anyone that you were having them in the first place,” Killian said infuriatingly. Emma tamped down on her frustration again, even as the obvious guilt-tripping was getting to her, because it wasn’t like he was _wrong._

 

“We just want to get you through this, and it sounds an awful lot like you’re not looking at this in ways that will let you do that,” he continued. “Unless you do have a plan and you’re simply keeping that hidden from the people who love you, too?”

 

Against her better judgment, she sighed, and pulled the shears out of her pocket. Killian eyed them, one eyebrow raised. 

 

“So you did find something other than Aladdin,” he said. 

 

“Yeah,” Emma admitted, sighing. “They’re…  he said I could use them to cut myself off from my fate. Stop being the Savior.”

 

“Stop being the Savior?” Killian repeated, stepping closer to her and staring at the shears. “That would mean - “

 

“No vision, no fight, no death,” Emma said. “At least, I think so.” 

 

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Killian asked. “How do you use those things?”

 

Emma still had no idea how they were supposed to be used - one more thing she needed to ask Aladdin about if she ever tracked him down again - but she was surprised that that wasn’t the issue for her at the moment. Killian’s face was very close, and it took a lot of self control to not flinch at the immediacy of the expectancy she found there. She couldn’t stop herself from taking a step back, however, and she closed her fingers around the shears and grasped them restlessly close to her chest.

 

“It’s not that simple,” she said to his look of surprise, only to watch it color into something like irritation. 

 

“Now you sound like Regina,” he said. 

 

“Well, maybe she has a point,” said Emma, a little too defensively.

 

Killian looked knowingly from the shears to her face. “She knows about those things?” he asked, and since it was clear he already knew the answer, Emma didn’t respond. “Let me guess - she doesn’t want you to use them. She’s having second feelings about carving the Evil Queen out of her and now she’s projecting them onto you.”

 

Emma did flinch at that, because she hadn’t considered it precisely in those terms - and because it was probably true, at least to some degree, if her reluctance to say that they should kill the Evil Queen a few hours ago was anything to go by. 

 

“She’s my friend,” Emma said tiredly. “We don’t know what the effect of using the shears would be, and we don’t know what my visions are. She just wants me to make sure I have all the information before I do anything.”

 

“Or she wants to ensure that her precious town keeps its Savior intact,” he countered.

 

“Hey, you live here, too,” she pointed out. “Maybe that’s part of it, but it’s not…  _ all  _ of it.” She trailed off weakly, unwilling as ever to talk about anything regarding Regina - especially Regina and their relationship - with Killian.

 

“Perhaps,” he said, obviously placating her. “But it’s not something she should have the final say in.”

 

“The final say in what?”

 

“If you use those things,” he said, nodding to the shears still in her hand. She tucked them away back in her pocket, suddenly unwilling for them to be out in the open. “Free yourself from your fate.”

 

It was tempting. Emma thought again of her mother’s suggestion that maybe her stint as the Dark One really had changed things - that she’d done this to herself. Like she’d even wanted that power. It was hard enough getting through the day without the ghosts of all the past Dark Ones whispering at her and trying to crawl their way back into existence within her. Emma wondered if Gold had had that same experience when it had been her name on the dagger instead of hers. She also wondered if now that his name was back on it, her voice was one of the ones he heard day in and day out: some piece of her that she’d never get back.

 

She hesitated. “Killian…”

 

“I think being the Savior has made you very unhappy,” he said. “Hasn’t it? Am I wrong?”

 

Helplessly, she shrugged again and looked away. 

 

“You deserve something for yourself,” he told her, earnestly enough that she looked up again to meet his eyes. “Emma, please believe that, if nothing else. You deserve to live your life for yourself, and not always for other people. You give and give, and I’m worried that someday I’ll turn around and there won’t be anything left of you.”

 

It wasn’t anything Emma hadn’t already thought before, multiple times over the course of multiple years, but hearing Killian put words to it made her chest twinge uncomfortably in something that wasn’t validation, but wasn’t guilt either. She shook her head. 

 

“But it’s also who I am,” Emma said. “And if I take that away…” She trailed off, unsure how to phrase it.  _ How much of me will be left then either?  _ No matter how she chose, she was destined to lose, and that was the part that really pissed her off. She was so done with fate. She was  _ so done  _ with her own choices meaning absolutely nothing at all. 

 

Killian was watching her worriedly when she looked back at him. “I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about this right now,” she said. “Let’s just not, okay?” 

 

He looked like he might press it, but was remembering her reaction to him doing so back at the loft. “Alright, Swan. For now,” Killian agreed. 

 

“Yeah,” she said. “For now.”

 

Killian retreated inside when it became clear that she wasn’t going to leave, and wasn’t going to respond to him. The sun had set some time ago, and the world had settled into a dusky haze of salt air and pine so typical of their little corner of the world. Emma breathed deep, tried to let it center her. 

 

Out of the shadows in her peripheral vision, magic billowed, the scent of it hitting Emma a few seconds later. She didn’t move. She knew that deep purple as intimately as she knew her own magic, and she’d be straight up lying if she said she hadn’t been expecting Regina to put in an appearance after everything that happened today. 

 

That didn’t mean she was looking forward to it, though. 

 

“Can you not lay into me tonight?” Emma asked, as she drew nearer and ascended the steps to the porch. “You promised you’d give me time.”

 

She thought she saw the barest hint of something on Regina’s face before it smoothed over into a mask Emma was much more familiar with. 

 

“So I did,” Regina replied. “Am I not allowed to check on you?”

 

“Check on me?” Emma asked dubiously. It was a nice idea in theory, but Emma didn’t remember the last time Regina had checked on her after a hard day. Maybe two years ago? Immediately after they’d mutually decided to give the friends thing a try? 

 

“Why the surprise?” Regina asked, stepping closer until Emma could clearly see her face, the contrasts of the lights and the shadows that played across its dramatic planes, the dark of her eyes and the bright of her lips. “We’re friends. It’s what friends do.”

 

“Yeah,” Emma said, chuckling humorlessly. “I guess.”

 

Regina wasn’t put off, only clucking her tongue softly and ascending the stairs to the porch until she leaned against the railing shoulder to shoulder with Emma, who shivered for no reason at all. “Sounds like the pirate’s gotten to you,” Regina said. “What’s he done now?”

 

“Nothing,” Emma said. Just bothering to give a damn about her, just like Regina, just like her son, just like her parents. “I’m just being an asshole today. Sorry.”

 

Regina glanced right over that comment. “If I’m giving you time to make this decision before ‘laying into you,’ as you put it, am I at least allowed to talk to you about anything else?” she asked.

 

“Sure,” Emma said. “You’re just usually never too excited to talk about Hook.”

 

“But I do want to talk about you,” Regina said. “And I accept that Hook’s a part of that.”

 

“Since when?” Emma said, scoffing slightly. 

 

But Regina’s voice was steady and serious. “Since now, I suppose.” she replied.

 

Something was different. This whole day had been different in a way Emma couldn’t have predicted when she’d woken up this morning. 

 

Emma turned to look at her, and startled to find her face very, very close. Heart pounding, she immediately shifted away and turned her face back toward the darkening street. 

 

“It’s nothing,” Emma repeated. “He’s just apparently all for me not being the Savior anymore, which I had… complicated feelings about.”

 

“What?” asked Regina, outrage flaring behind her eyes. 

 

“Look, I know how you feel about this,” said Emma. 

 

“You  _ are  _ the Savior, Emma,” Regina said anyway, and Emma rolled her eyes at the inevitability of it. “You were the Savior before you ever got to Storybrooke.”

 

“But would I have been the Savior without a damn curse and a prophecy?” Emma asked, making Regina’s expression darken at the implication which couldn’t be avoided. As expected, Regina looked away first. 

 

“Does it matter?” Regina asked. “Are you really so eager to change your own fundamental nature?”

 

“See, this is exactly what you agreed wasn’t going to happen,” Emma said. 

 

Regina sniffed. “You were the one who volunteered the information.”

 

“You were the one pulling it out of me after saying you wouldn’t!” But there was no anger behind Emma’s tone. Regina had fallen silent again, waiting for Emma to direct the conversation or pull away. Emma buried her head in her arms on the porch rail. 

 

“I’m just afraid, you know? All this, and now the Evil Queen showing her face for some reason. I’m not ready for a fight.”

 

“Why are you assuming she wants a fight?”

 

“Why are you assuming she’s not?” Emma asked, raising her head. “That’s a change from earlier.”

 

“Is it?” Regina asked, momentarily and inexplicably looking faintly smug. “It is, isn’t it. I must be having complicated feelings of my own.”

 

Emma eyed her, but she didn’t elaborate. God knew Emma wasn’t eager to talk about her own complicated feelings, so she let her have it. 

 

“Look, thanks for dropping by,” Emma said, shifting backwards on her heels. “I should have called you after I left the loft. I’m sorry for running out and leaving you with them.”

 

Regina waved her hand. “Not a problem. Domesticity calls, I take it?” 

 

The involuntary curl of her lips as she said it was so absurdly comforting that Emma couldn’t be bothered to call her out on it. “I really should go in,” was all Emma said, a hint of a smile playing on the corners of her lips.

 

“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Regina said and, in a gesture she’d retired since Emma had been the Dark One, brushed a hand over Emma’s arm. “Goodnight, Emma.”

 

The gesture caused little panicky butterflies to take flight in her stomach, like they’d been there all along just waiting to reemerge, and Emma jerked back in confusion. 

 

“Are you all right?” Regina murmured, eyes darkening in concern, and Emma nodded, absolutely not wanting to investigate. 

 

“Goodnight, Regina,” Emma murmured in return, and watched as her magic swirled around her, purple and seductive, enveloping her whole until she was out of sight and Emma was left staring at the empty place she had been. 

 

Inside, Killian had started dinner, which she thanked him for with a kiss. It was soft and familiar, and did nothing to set her stomach churning, which was  _ fine _ , they’d been together for over two years, it was  _ good  _ that she was comfortable.

 

“Regina stopped by?” he asked her. She looked up through the window over the sink, which looked out over the porch and the last of the sunset beyond. 

 

“She was just checking in after everything today. Everything’s fine,” she assured him. 

 

He nodded, and stole a kiss of his own. The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough, no more talk about shears or Saviors or destiny or visions, and Emma allowed herself to be lulled into a state of calm, tucked against her boyfriend’s shoulder with Hulu on the TV and Killian’s still-comforting confusion at the ads in her ear. 

 

It was only at two in the morning when Emma woke suddenly, sitting bolt upright, that she realized. The crisp lines of her dress; the too-perfect lay of her hair; the borderline sultry carriage of herself; the bold reds and darks of her makeup contrasting starkly even in the low light. Her moments of  _ actual, genuine confusion  _ at their conversation. 

 

That hadn’t been Regina. That had been the Evil Queen. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

The next day dawned bright and chilly enough to feel fall coming fast towards Storybrooke. Regina pulled her coat more tightly around her as she walked up the sidewalk into Granny’s, shivering reflexively even as the bell chimed overhead and the door shut the cold out behind her.

 

“Regina!” called Snow from over the book she was reading. “I thought we weren’t meeting until later?” 

 

“I was hungry. Thought I might come a bit early before you got here, but I see you had the same idea,” Regina said, sliding into the booth across from her. Next to Snow sat Neal’s carrier, and Regina obligingly made faces at him until he giggled delightedly at her. 

 

“Do you want to hold him?” Snow asked. “It’s no trouble to take him out.”

 

“Maybe later,” Regina dismissed. “Did you want to keep reading?”

 

“No, no,” said Snow, putting aside her book with her other things in Neal’s diaper bag. “How are you? I know yesterday was rough. You left so soon after Emma.”

 

“I just needed to process,” Regina said. “There was a lot going on.”

 

Snow seemed sympathetic, for which Regina was glad. “That’s your way of being polite, I guess. I’m sorry if I offended you when we were talking about the Evil Queen. I’m just worried about Emma.”

 

“I am too,” Regina assured her. “No need for apologies. Have you talked to her since?”

 

Snow shook her head, worry crossing her face. “No. I’m trying not to crowd her. I’ve never seen her so panicked as she was when she left yesterday.”

 

“You think it has something to do with the visions she’s been having?”

 

“Of course,” Snow said, tilting her head. “Don’t you? You seemed like you were pretty much on the same page as the rest of us.”

 

“I am,” Regina said. “I… actually might have stopped by last night to check on her. She was saying something about not wanting to be the Savior anymore. Do you know anything about that?”

 

“She confides more in you than in me, I think,” Snow said slowly. 

 

“She used to,” Regina said. “Please? Like you said, I’m just worried about her.”

 

Snow hesitated once more, and silently, Regina goaded her on toward the inevitable. Snow White never had been able to keep a secret, and while Regina had long since stopped raging about  _ that _ , it didn’t mean she wouldn’t use it to her advantage where she could. 

 

It was all for nothing. Regina watched as Snow seemed to catch sight of something behind her, probably through the windows at Regina’s back, her posture stiffening and her eyes widening in a way Regina once would have found comical. 

 

“ _ You _ ,” she hissed, protectively leaning over Neal. “Get away from me.”

 

Regina supposed that must mean she’d been outed by her own doppelganger. She knew enough when to give up the game, but she wasn’t finished here. 

 

“Oh relax, I’m not here to hurt you or my godson,” she said. 

 

“ _ Your  _ godson?” Snow said, voice rising in pitch. Regina struggled not to roll her eyes. 

 

“Enough with the dramatics,” she said.

 

“Oh, I’ll give you dramatics,” Snow said darkly, visibly readying herself for a fight. 

 

“I’d caution you not to,” Regina said before she could do something stupid, like yelling some drivel about the Evil Queen that would force her to bring out her magic. She wasn’t  _ finished _ here. “Do you really want to incite panic among the masses? Especially when there’s no way for them to distinguish between me and… well,” she said, smirking, “ _ me _ .”

 

Snow looked confused, but she hadn’t made a move, which Regina would count as a win. “Are you threatening Regina?” she asked. 

 

Regina laughed. “Dear,” she said. “I  _ am  _ Regina.”

 

“You most certainly aren’t,” Snow said, bristling, and Regina might have taken the defense as a compliment if Snow hadn’t been trying to protect Regina’s lesser half from Regina herself.

 

“Oh?” asked Regina, settling back into the booth. “Tell me. Has the Regina you’ve  _ decided  _ is the real deal been… shall we say… quite all there, lately?” 

 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Snow said, an attempt at haughtiness that made Regina want to sigh at how it had aged on Snow White. 

 

“She hasn’t been - indecisive? Overly emotional? Lacking a certain spark?” Regina asked. 

 

“I’m not telling you anything,” Snow said, narrowing her eyes. “I can recognize a fishing expedition when I see one.”

 

_ That’s more than your daughter is able to do,  _ Regina nearly said, and would have, if she were here to sow that kind of uncertainty. 

 

“You don’t have to say anything - I can see it in your eyes,” Regina said instead, sipping at the coffee the waitress had just brought by and humming contentedly - just the way she liked it. “More to the point, I know what things  _ I’m  _ no longer saddled with. It’s not exactly a stretch to figure out who got what in the divorce when I’m one of the parties. An unwilling party, to be sure, but you can’t erase me.”

 

“Regina can,” Snow said.

 

“Regina  _ tried _ ,” said Regina. “Turns out it’s not so easy.”

 

“And what aren’t you saddled with?” Snow asked. “As you so elegantly put it.”

 

“Ah-ah-ah,” Regina said. “I can also recognize a fishing expedition when I see one.”

 

Snow stared at her for a moment, and Regina stared back, waiting for her to break. It didn’t take long. 

 

“What is it that you want?” Snow asked. “We saw you on the sidewalk outside the loft yesterday, but you didn’t do anything. Now you’re here in Granny’s, drinking coffee. What’s your game here? And don’t forget, I’ve played all of them when it comes to you.”

 

Comfortably, Regina stretched out an arm along the back of the booth. “I’m not denying that you have. Of anyone, you probably know best what I’m capable of. But you also know best who I am as a whole - good and bad together. Which is why I’ve come to you. If anyone has a hope of understanding this situation, Snow, it’s you.”

 

“Don’t use flattery on me,” Snow snapped. “All your games, remember?”

 

Regina smiled, somewhat bittersweetly. “I know. This time, however, I swear to you it’s nothing but the truth. I lived as the woman who carved me out of her up until three weeks ago. I have all of the same memories, have lived all the same experiences, carry all the same loves, same hates, same likes and dislikes. It hurts every day that I don’t get to hug my son. I would die before I hurt you or any of your family.”

 

“Those are pretty words,” Snow remarked, apparently unimpressed. “How can I know you’re telling the truth?”

 

“Why would I be lying?” Regina asked, spreading her hands before her. “Does it make sense to you that I would be stuck in some evil version of myself that existed years ago?”

 

“Yes!” Snow said. “Regina hasn’t been you in a long time.”

 

“Regina never  _ stopped _ being me,” Regina said. “That’s her dirty little secret. Why else do you think she was so desperate to cut me out and crush my heart?”

 

She was starting to get through to Snow if the wide-eyed gaping was anything to go by - still more confusion that realization, but Regina would take it. Snow shook her head slowly, clearly ordering her thoughts before she tried to speak again. 

 

“Regina,” she said at length. “What do you  _ want?  _ Do you want to reunite in one body?”

 

Regina laughed at that. “No,” she said. “I’m happy enough to be liberated - my other half is tragically a repressive control freak.”

 

“And you aren’t?” Snow asked, knowingly.

 

“Not like she is,” Regina said. “As evidenced by her attempt to kill me after years of trying to starve me out quietly. But I do take your point.”

 

“Regina,” Snow admonished. 

 

“Ah yes, your question,” Regina said. “I want what Regina wants. No more, no less.”

 

“No more, no less - why do I doubt that?” asked Snow. 

 

“Doubt it if you want,” Regina said. “I didn’t expect you to do otherwise.”

 

“Then what was your goal in meeting with me?” Snow asked. 

 

“To get you to see that I am Regina,” said Regina. “Which I’d consider a mission accomplished. And just in time, too,” she said, noticing her doppelganger about to enter the diner. Through the windows set into the door, they locked eyes, and Regina took pleasure in the panic she saw flare up there, brilliant and sudden as a flare. “Think about it, Snow,” she said, and magicked herself away. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The other diners didn’t blink an eye at either Regina’s disappearance in a cloud of purple smoke, or in her sudden reappearance through the door a split second later. 

 

Regina tried to maintain at least an external veneer of calm while she made her way towards Snow, who was staring at her wide-eyed. 

 

“Are you alright?” she asked her. “Did she hurt you, threaten you?”

 

Snow shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that,” she assured Regina, but Regina noted that she wasn’t offered Neal to check him over from his chubby cheeks to his little kicking feet. “She said - she said she just wanted me to see her as you.”

 

Regina sat back in relief. “Well, thankfully you won’t be falling for that.” But Snow was regarding her thoughtfully, and a cold fear started gathering in the pit of Regina’s belly in response. “You aren’t, are you?” she asked.

 

“Not too long ago you would have been scoffing and bristling until we left the diner if I’d said something like that,” Snow said at length. 

 

That cold fear started to climb outward. “You aren’t telling me that you see her as Regina… in place of me?” Regina asked. 

 

“No,” Snow hurried to assure her. “Just. She was right about you missing something.”

 

“I thought you wanted me nice,” Regina said. “Calm, sedate, contained. Hasn’t that been your goal your whole life?”

 

“I want you  _ happy _ ,” Snow said, beginning to look upset. “It’s taken me a long time, but I thought we’d come to understand each other, that our happiness isn’t going to look the same.”

 

Blankly, Regina stared back. Snow extended a hand in concern, but absently, Regina drew her own back across the table out of reach, focusing her mind with some effort on Snow’s previous comment.

 

“What  _ exactly  _ did she say it was that I’m supposedly missing?” Regina asked. Predictably, Snow instantly went uncomfortable and tense. “Snow, just come out and say it.”

 

“Um,” Snow began auspiciously, and looked apologetically at Regina. “She suggested that you might be more emotional and indecisive than normal.”

 

Regina nearly laughed, wondering what ‘more emotional than normal’ actually looked like on her. Snow’s expression was telling her that it was true, though, so she narrowed her eyes and pressed on. “Well, was that it?”

 

“She also suggested you’d lost your rage, which I think is obvious,” Snow said. 

 

“Is that exactly how she said it?”

 

“She said you’d lost your spark,” Snow said, watching her carefully.

 

That was troubling. “Has she been watching me?” Regina wondered, looking behind her out the window, but didn’t find the Evil Queen hanging around. 

 

“I wouldn’t put it past her, but she didn’t say,” Snow said. 

 

Thoughtfully, Regina leaned back in the booth. “I don’t get it. She hasn’t come after anyone, and has only tried to impersonate me. What does she want?” 

 

“She said…” Snow said, and hesitated. “She said she wants the same things you want.”

 

It was like pulling teeth. Regina rolled her eyes and tried to ignore the fear exploding in her belly. “Such as?” she pressed. 

 

“She didn’t say,” Snow said again. 

 

“Well next time, maybe you should ask!” Regina said, before collapsing head-first into the cradle of her hands.  _ She wants the same things you want…  _ Regina had done this long enough to other people to know that she was being toyed with, and worse, that the Evil Queen was  _ enjoying  _ it.  

 

When she lifted her head again, Snow had that worried expression on her face again. “What?” Regina said, agitated. 

 

“She’s not wrong?” Snow said, irritatingly phrasing it as a question. “Something’s off with you.”

 

“Of course something’s off with me, I’ve cut out half of myself,” Regina snapped. 

 

Snow didn’t press, thankfully; Regina didn’t trust what she might have accidentally confessed. Surprisingly, Snow looked like she might also be aware of the delicacy of the moment, leaving Regina to squirm under the scrutiny of what seemed like several questions passing through her mind that she didn’t give voice to.

 

When she finally did decide on a question to voice, it wasn’t the one Regina would have expected. 

 

“Do you still want the same things as you did before?” Snow asked, genuinely curious.

 

Regina did laugh then, because of course she wanted the same things. Regina was a riotous mass of wanting, and always had been, the specific things she’d wanted only changing under the extreme external pressures that had forced her into entirely new beings. Darkly, she supposed here she was, an entirely new being, through the gruesome process of imprecise excisement. Nothing had changed, nothing had evolved - just this lingering phantom sense of loss - of control, of power, of self.

 

“Well, look at you, actually asking me what I want,” Regina said, hoping the deflection would be enough to distract Snow. 

 

It wasn’t. Snow leaned over and took her hands. “Regina, I’m worried about you,” she said earnestly. “Why did you really choose now to cast out the Evil Queen?”

 

“The opportunity arose,” Regina said. “Are you really complaining?”

 

“I think you’ll agree with me that it has kind of turned out to be a problem, especially on top of Emma’s visions.”

 

“Which as you would have her believe are rooted in my decision to split from the Evil Queen,” Regina reminded her. “I haven’t forgotten about that.”

 

“I didn’t think you had,” Snow said appraisingly. “I mean also in light of this whole business with the shears.”

 

“Emma told you?” Regina asked, shocked. “I thought she was planning on keeping that close to the vest for a while.”

 

“She told  _ you, _ ” Snow pointed out.

 

“I was with her when Aladdin gave them to her. I get a pass,” Regina said. Snow rolled her eyes. 

 

“Hook let me know, if it actually makes you feel better,” she said. 

 

“She told  _ Hook _ ?” Regina asked sharply.

 

“Apparently it doesn’t,” Snow commented under her breath. “She is living with him,” she continued, as if it weren’t a big deal at all; and in some ways, Regina was forced to admit, it wasn’t. “What’s the issue, here?”

 

“The issue is that she swore to me that she’d have all the facts before making a decision, and she’s not exactly in her best state of mind right now,” Regina said. 

 

That seemed to trigger something in Snow’s memory, and after a moment of concentration, she gasped and her eyes went wide. 

 

“What?” 

 

“The Evil Queen,” Snow said. “She said she went to visit Emma last night.”

 

Regina was up and out of her seat even as Snow was hurriedly explaining, “I didn’t think anything of it because I thought she was  _ you _ , I didn’t - hey, where are you - “

 

But Regina had already disappeared in a hasty cloud of purple. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Regina didn’t bother with pleasantries, materializing in front of Emma’s desk at the station, and already calling, “Emma?” 

 

That she needn’t have bothered was lost on her in the crushing wave of relief at finding Emma whole and in front of her, threatening to doze off in front of her computer as if it were any other day at the office. 

 

“Holy shit,” said Emma as she jerked abruptly and fully awake, knocking over a pile of papers from the corner of her desk in the process as she caught sight of Regina. “Don’t  _ do  _ that, Regina, I thought we’d talked about this!”

 

David crashed his way into the office then, wild-eyed like he’d been expecting some alarm to be raised at any moment today. “Regina? What’s happened? Is everything alright? I thought you were supposed to be meeting Snow right now.”

 

“Take it down a notch, David,” Regina instructed him, counter to the pounding of her own heart. “She’s fine, Neal’s fine, no attacks as far as I know.”

 

“Then what the hell was the poofing about?” Emma asked. It wasn’t an unreasonable demand, and Regina was starting to feel foolish for overreacting, crossing her arms defensively. 

 

“Snow mentioned the Evil Queen paid a visit to you last night,” Regina said, for the moment opting not to mention anything about the Evil Queen herself masquerading around town as Regina herself, or that it had been a good enough disguise to fool Snow fifteen minutes ago. 

 

“Oh, that,” Emma muttered. Regina’s eyes went wide. 

 

“Oh,  _ that _ ?” she repeated, all her previous calm evaporated. “You knew it was her?” 

 

“Wait, how did Mom know?” Emma asked, eyes narrowed. 

 

“Don’t dodge the question - you  _ knew  _ it was her and you didn’t think to tell us?”

 

“I didn’t realize until the middle of the night,” Emma said. “It was fine. I guess I forgot about it this morning.”

 

“It was  _ fine _ ?” Regina asked, growing more and more flabbergasted by the second. “Are you listening to yourself?”

 

“Emma, she’s got a point,” David said. “I know it was upsetting you yesterday, but you’re not taking the threat the Evil Queen poses anywhere near seriously enough.”

 

“I am not having this argument again, at least not right now,” Emma said firmly. “You came here to make sure I was okay, I guess, and I appreciate that, but I’m fine. Go back to coffee with Mom or whatever you were doing.”

 

“You’re treating this like an ordinary Tuesday,” Regina said.

 

“It is an ordinary Tuesday!” Emma said. “Look: reports, bearclaw, phone about to ring about Streaky up a tree.” The phone rang, proving her point. Making a face, David went to answer it, leaving them alone in Emma’s office. 

 

“It is the furthest thing from an ordinary Tuesday,” Regina said lowly, leaning over Emma’s desk. “At least while you’ve got those shears in your possession.”

 

“I’m not having  _ this  _ argument again right now, either,” Emma told her flatly. 

 

“But you’ll have it with your boyfriend?” Regina asked. 

 

“Excuse me for wanting the perspective of someone else I trust!” Emma exclaimed. “And how did  _ you  _ know about that? Are you all talking about me behind my back or something?”

 

“Hook told your mother, as far as I can ascertain,” Regina said. “And she didn’t seem to think it was a secret.” She ignored Emma’s groan. “Which means that it’s absolutely time to have this argument again.”

 

“Why? I haven’t made any decisions, I’ve still barely had time to think about it,” said Emma. “The only thing that’s changed is that Killian and my mom know. Depending on how closely he’s listening right now, maybe David.”

 

Regina checked behind her, finding an empty office. “David’s either gone to get Streaky out of the tree, or avoid World War III,” she remarked, waving her hand and soundproofing the office while she was thinking of it. Emma was giving her an odd look when she turned back around. 

 

“You’re picking a fight in a really weird way,” she said. 

 

“You’re the one with a secret,” Regina said, wondering how Emma meant her to be picking a fight. Should she have been shouting more? “I’d assumed you didn’t want it broadcast to anyone who happened to wander in.”

 

“I guess I’m just not used to you actually wanting to talk things out,” Emma said. 

 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Regina asked. 

 

“You know. You’re usually more the in-your-face explosive type or the we’re-doing-things-my-way-but-you-won’t-realize-it-until-it’s-too-late type,” Emma said. 

 

“Are you calling me manipulative?” Regina asked. 

 

Emma looked at her in surprise, and maybe a little abashment. “Uh, there’s no nice way to put it,” she said, “but yeah. It’s not exactly like you didn’t know that about yourself.”

 

Regina stared at her for a moment, not sure how she felt about that. She looked around the soundproofed office again - so that they could have a  _ chat _ , Emma was right, what was happening to her? - and back to Emma. 

 

“You feeling okay?” Emma asked her, enough genuine concern in her voice that it snapped Regina back to the matter at hand. 

 

“Since you seem to want to have a chat, let’s do that,” Regina said, sitting primly in the chair across Emma’s desk. “I did some research on the shears last night with Belle’s help -” Emma squawked indignantly - “oh calm  _ down _ , I didn’t tell her what for, and she’s too focused on being pregnant and dealing with Rumpel right now to care, anyway. But we did find a few references to them in Rumpel’s old books.”

 

“And?” Emma asked. 

 

“Folk tales, for the most part,” Regina admitted. “Beyond the obvious mythological references to the Fates, references to anyone other than the Fates holding the shears pretty limited to morality tales.”

 

“So that Fates are definitely real?” Emma asked, that look on her face she still - endearingly - tended to get when discovering that some fairy tale character was in the flesh two feet away from her. “ _ Regina _ . That totally explains why you guys believe in destiny and prophecy and all that.”

 

“Hmm,” Regina said, noncommittally. “It was never explained to my satisfaction how it all worked, but yes, we all knew about the Fates.”

 

“So I mean, if they’re definitely really real, then that means my visions…” Emma said, trailing off.

 

“Are still possibly any number of things other than fatalistic prophecy sent by three old hags at a spinning wheel,” Regina said. “Nothing’s changed, Emma.”

 

“Right,” Emma agreed, visibly disappointed, and Regina just barely restrained herself from snapping at her. “Um. These stories - what happened to the people who used the shears?”

 

Regina sighed. “Some insanity, some catatonia, some series of truly unfortunate events, but nothing that can be absolutely tied back as historical events to historical people who used the shears.”

 

“Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?” Emma asked, narrowing her eyes. 

 

“Because as anyone who’s good with stories will tell you, folk tales are often rooted in history,” Regina said. “On the other hand, since people from the Enchanted Forest are pretty firm believers in fate and destiny, this might be just another example of that.”

 

“So a big load of nothing,” Emma said thoughtfully, slouching in her chair before looking up seriously at Regina. 

 

“Well, I guess it depends on what you call  _ nothing _ ,” Regina said, “but yes, essentially.”

 

Emma hesitated, seeming to want to say something but knowing that Regina wouldn’t like it, whatever it was - which was enough to tell Regina she wouldn’t. 

 

“What?” she asked, trying to keep her suspicion out of her voice.

 

“I never got your take on the whole vision thing - beyond you not believing they’re real,” Emma added, no doubt catching Regina’s expression. “But when it comes to the whole prophecy thing. Everyone seems pretty convinced it’s the final battle thing, which  _ I  _ thought we’d put way behind us, despite the fact that my visions predict something else completely.”

 

“You mean, they predict me killing you instead of you killing me,” Regina said dryly. 

 

Emma shot her a look. “Can you take this seriously?”

 

“I am taking this seriously,” Regina said, standing up to lean over Emma’s desk. “I can’t afford  _ not  _ to take this seriously - “

 

“Hey, I can’t, either!” Emma objected hotly.

 

“ - but that means  _ not  _ succumbing to taking the easiest way out of it and dismissing the rest of it so we can all go home!” Regina said. “Emma,  _ why  _ are you so determined to believe it’s me under that hood?”

 

“I don’t know!” Emma shouted, standing up to meet her. “I mean, I’m  _ not _ , it’s just something I’m afraid of. Which you should be able understand, since the last time I checked you’re scared of the Evil Queen too!”

 

“The last time  _ I  _ checked, you weren’t at all afraid of her since she came to your house  _ and you didn’t tell anyone _ ,” Regina said. 

 

“There was nothing to tell,” Emma said, “at least not right then. She came over, we talked, she left five minutes later. I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know, so  _ leave it _ , please.”

 

For once, Regina did, standing stiffly while Emma recomposed herself. 

 

“I can’t stop thinking about what my mom said yesterday,” she said finally. “About how being the Dark One might have changed the prophecy. And if I did somehow do that, then what does that say about me being the Savior at all, anymore?”

 

“You mean, since it’s the Savior who’s meant to kill the Evil Queen,” Regina said slowly, trying very, very hard to keep herself detached from who the Savior and the Evil Queen were. 

 

“Right,” said Emma, tense shoulders relaxing slightly at Regina’s matter-of-fact tone. “But like - how does this work? Because I  _ chose  _ to become the Dark One,” she said, as if it were important that Regina understood this. As if Regina hadn’t been there and didn’t know every minute detail of how and why exactly Emma had felt she had to choose to become the Dark One at all. 

 

“I know,” she murmured, and relief crossed Emma’s face. “I don’t buy Snow’s armchair philosophy about this in the slightest, but that is the framework it seems that fate tends to work in. Binding us to moments, and to people.”

 

“So you think she might be right?” Emma asked, and Regina tried not to roll her eyes. 

 

“Weren’t you listening? I don’t think she’s right. She certainly doesn’t know enough to talk about the subject, and you shouldn’t be listening to her if it’s going to send you into an existential crisis about whether or not you’re meant to fight me, or some version of me, to the death.”

 

“I just… I can’t help but feel like my visions are prophecy or not, they’re something I can’t ignore when it comes to me being the Savior,” Emma said. 

 

“So… you feel that you’re receiving these visions precisely because you are the Savior?” Regina asked, clarifying, and Emma nodded, grateful that she’d finally gotten it. “And that’s why you’re so drawn to…”

 

Emma drew out the shears, apparently having been carrying them around in her jeans pocket the whole time. “Yeah,” she said, looking at Regina for a response.

 

“You’re actually considering this,” Regina said flatly. 

 

It was the wrong response. Emma rolled her eyes and the moment was broken. “Regina, how do you know that using the shears  _ won’t _ prevent my vision?” 

 

“Do you distrust me so much that you won’t accept that I would never kill you - any version of me?” Regina asked. 

 

“No, I just trust fate less,” Emma said, but looked away from Regina as she said it, and something in Regina’s heart clenched. “I feel like this is an impossible situation. Everyone is going to be mad at me no matter what I do - either I do nothing and accept that I’m going to  _ die _ , or I do something and stop being the Savior. There’s no way to win - there never has been.”

 

“Of course there’s a way to win,” Regina said. “We just haven’t found it yet.”

 

“That’s easy for you to say - your life isn’t the one that’s on the line,” Emma retorted. 

 

“And you think that not being the Savior anymore is going to help you save your life?” Regina asked. “Say you prevent the vision. The Savior isn’t some magical power bestowed on you by a prophecy, it’s something that’s literally written into your thought processes and values and reactions. If you remove that crucial piece of yourself from the equation, what happens the next time the town’s in danger? What if it’s Henry, or your parents, or Hook who’s life is on the line? Are you willing to gamble away your ability to save them? Or worse - your  _ willingness  _ to save them?”

 

“How dare you,” Emma demanded. “You have no idea what it’s like being the Savior. So what if I decide I don’t want it anymore? Are you honestly telling me I don’t have the right to choose that after what you did to yourself?”

 

Regina recoiled as if Emma had slapped her, remembering her own despair and a New York rooftop, a syringe with her own fingers on it, and Emma’s eyes watching her six feet away before the pain hit. “That was different,” she protested.

 

“How?” Emma asked. “You decided you were done trying to figure out your problematic parts, so you took the easy way out.”

 

“At least you’re admitting that this is the easy way out,” Regina said. “That’s something.”

 

“Of course it’s the easy way out. Why shouldn’t I want the easy way out after everything the other way has gotten me?” Emma asked, slumping. “I’m just… I’m tired, Regina. I don’t even know if I can do this.”

 

“Of course you can do this,” Regina said firmly. “The Emma Swan I know doesn’t let anyone dictate what she can or can’t do. Believe me, I’ve tried.” It earned her a weak laugh, but it was enough to bolster Regina’s confidence to ask the next question. “Emma, I don’t even understand why you’re taking what you’re seeing - these visions - as absolute fact? Beyond the visions themselves, which I can imagine must be terrifying. You’ve  _ never  _ put much stock in anything that took away your free will.”

 

“I guess it’s like you said,” Emma said, looking away. “I’d rather be prepared for the worst case scenario.”

 

“The worst case scenario being your death?” Regina asked. 

 

“I guess,” Emma said again, but it felt more than incomplete. “I just don’t like being toyed with, and this is what this feels like.”

 

“I’m sure it does,” Regina said, grim. The same thing had occurred to her. When she’d suggested to Emma yesterday that the Evil Queen might have planted the visions in her mind, it wasn’t exactly a throwaway thought. She’d spent a lot of the night trying to figure out how exactly she might have done it, as well as her motives for doing so, even as everything in her rebelled against the idea that any part of her might want to hurt Emma. 

 

But that was the point, wasn’t it? The Evil Queen  _ wasn’t  _ a part of her anymore. She certainly wasn’t a part of her that Regina had any right to speak for, no matter how instinctively she felt otherwise, and it was impossible not to feel the weight of her family’s lives - and more to the immediate point,  _ Emma’s  _ life - hanging in the balance. 

 

“Yeah?” Emma said, interest piqued. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean that the Evil Queen already knows about your visions, and your boyfriend is apparently doing a good job blabbing about the shears on your behalf. How long do you think it will be before she finds out about them? Better yet, how do you even know that the Evil Queen isn’t out there right now plotting to manipulate you into using them?” Regina asked. “Since that’s what I do best, apparently.”

 

“Stop,” Emma said, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. “That was out of line. I’m sorry.”

 

“No you’re not, and nor should you be,” Regina said. “You’re quite right. You’re having trouble predicting my reactions because I’m not the person you knew anymore.”

 

“Regina.”

 

“It’s true. It would seem that splitting my dark from my light means that among other things I lost my capacity - or at least my instinct - for manipulation,” Regina said. “One guess as to where it went.”

 

“Regina, you can’t really be serious. You think that just because - what, you’re not trying to use my family against me to get what you want here? - that you’ve lost your edge?” Emma asked, somewhat incredulous. 

 

“It’s not about me ‘losing my edge’,” Regina quoted back at her. 

 

“Then what is it about? Because I’d call you being on my side in this you just being my friend,” Emma said. “Unless three weeks ago you’re telling me you  _ would  _ have used my family against me to get your way.”

 

“This isn’t a game,” Regina snapped, as much because she was beginning reach the limits of her patience as she wanted very much to steer Emma away from that question. “I know perfectly well what tactics I used, and used well, to get me what I wanted as the Evil Queen. If you think that she won’t try to manipulate you just because she cares about you, you’re in for a world of trouble.”

 

“But you don’t think she’s out to hurt me,” said Emma, obviously trying to read her. “You don’t think she’s under the hood. You don’t even think the visions are real.”

 

Regina laughed darkly. “Emma, it clearly doesn’t matter what I believe. No part of me would kill you. I’m certain of that. But I don’t know what her ultimate goal is here, and if she’s putting in appearances to your house and avoiding me, I can guess that she’s trying to use you as a pawn to get to me.”

 

Emma scowled. “Not everything is about you, Regina.”

 

“Emma,” Regina said, immediately apologetic. 

 

“Just - just go, okay? I promise that if the Evil Queen comes around again, I’ll let you know. And,” she said, anticipating Regina’s next comment, “I promise I won’t use the shears before the next time I see you, okay?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Emma managed to hold off the vision until Regina had disappeared out the door, only collapsing forward to brace herself on the desk and giving into the spots behind her eyes once she was sure Regina wasn’t hanging around and -

 

_ Parry. Block. Counterstrike.  _

 

Her arms were aching, her hands were trembling, cold sweat was broken out all over her body. 

 

_ Parry, parry, parry,  _ three quick stumbling steps backward. 

 

_ Who are you?  _ Emma tried to make her mouth say, but she had as much control over her body as she’d ever had in these things, and the figure remained horribly anonymous, a gaping hole that Emma’s mind could’t fill in. 

 

She knew it was coming - two more steps backward and an unwitting hole in her defense, it always happened that way - and she tried desperately to wrench her own arms under her control, but it didn’t matter. The sword slid neatly between her ribs and she screamed silently - 

 

And came back to herself, clutching her left side and trying to breathe through the pain that didn’t have a source. 

 

Which was of course the moment that David returned, looking warily around the room before he entered and caught sight of Emma about to pass out in her office. 

 

“Whoa, Emma,” he said, hurrying over to her. “Are you okay? What happened?” His eyes were furious, and she could read that he thought she’d been attacked - they needed to have words about that hair-trigger panic reflex of his - and weakly, she beat him off. 

 

“I’m fine,” she gasped. “Just a vision.”

 

“That’s not convincing me you’re okay,” David told her, staying at her eye level. “Are they usually like that?”

 

“Not quite this intense,” Emma admitted. “It’s fine. I’m not actually hurt, I promise.”

 

“Okay,” said David, clearly not convinced. “Come on then, let me help you walk it off.” 

 

She refused to go outside where anyone - namely Regina - might see her, and so he supported her around the station’s hallways until the pain was gone and she was able to convince him it was. 

 

“Look, you know hit and run isn’t exactly the Evil Queen’s style,” Emma said when he trailed her back inside, watching her for any signs of distress she might be trying to hide from him. “She’s more of a big and showy gloatfest type. You hung out around her long enough to know that.”

 

“Well, yeah,” David admitted. “But a lot of time has passed since then. Things might be different, now.”

 

“You think she’s changed, then?” Emma asked. “Like Regina said?”

 

David looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I think it’s more dangerous to assume she hasn’t, and she’s still exactly the same enemy we know. To be honest, that’s what’s got me on edge.”

 

“What, the unpredictability?” Emma guessed. 

 

“The Evil Queen was a lot of things, but she was always pretty safely predictable,” David said, running a hand through his hair. “At least when it came to her motives.”

 

“Mom’s head on a platter?” Emma asked dryly, and David shrugged. 

 

“We knew what she wanted,” he said. “That was comforting when not a whole lot else was.”

 

David had a point. That fact was that the Evil Queen was out there with some kind of plan, and not only did none of them have a clue what it might be, they had no idea what she wanted to achieve. Regina seemed to be assuming that at least part of what she wanted was to hurt them, despite all her anger toward Emma for assuming that very thing. Emma herself felt uneasy assuming either way - one one hand, it was better to plan for the worst, but on the other, it had been too long for the Evil Queen  _ not  _ to have changed, bound up with Regina as she’d been for all these years. 

 

It left Emma with the distinct sense that she was missing something huge, and she didn’t like it. She picked up Henry from school and nudged him into a quick one-on-one soccer scrimmage when they passed a park to burn off some of the excess energy. 

 

“Ugh, Mom,” he complained when she kicked a seventh goal past his sorry defense. “Stop taking your frustration out on me.”

 

“Stop being a sore loser,” she parroted back. “Come on, surely my kid’s got better skills than this.”

 

He rolled his eyes. “You know I don’t. Come on, what gives? Did you fight with Mom again or something?”

 

“What? No. I mean, why would you say that?”

 

“Because this is how you always get when you guys fight,” he said, knowingly. “I’ll give you three more rounds if you tell me.”

 

“A, that’s none of your business,” she told him, kicking the ball at him. Unimpressed, he let it bounce off his shoulder. “And B, even if we did fight, that’s not what’s got me like this.”

 

“Is it your visions?” he asked, serious now. She sighed and got the ball, dribbling between her feet unadroitly just to give herself something to do that wasn’t see the fear creeping into her son’s face. 

 

“That’s part of it,” she said. “Kid, I don’t want to worry you. This isn’t your problem.”

 

“You’re my mom, of course it’s my problem,” he said. She smiled at the way his emotions were always so close to the surface and easy to read. He’d never had a need to learn how to hide them or push them down, and Emma prayed it would stay that way. 

 

“Come here,” she said, draping an arm over his shoulders, feeling the way he leaned into her reluctantly. “I’m worried about a lot. And your mom and I did fight, because we’re both worried about each other, and neither of us really know what to do about it.”

 

“You’re worried about each other?” Henry asked, looking up at her. “What’s wrong with mom?”

 

“Uh, she’s got an evil doppelganger running around,” Emma said, eyebrow raised. 

 

“Oh, that,” Henry said, and the dismissive note in his voice made Emma pull back. “What?”

 

“You seem weirdly unconcerned,” Emma said. “‘Fess up, what aren’t you telling me?”

 

“Nothing,” Henry said defensively. 

 

“She hasn’t come after you, has she?” Emma asked. 

 

“No!” 

 

That denial was a little bit too quick, Emma thought, but her lie detector wasn’t exactly pinging either, and so she let it slide when Henry refused to give under her stare. 

 

“You’d tell me if she did?” she asked, and Henry huffed, pulling completely away from her. 

 

“What is it with you and Mom? The Evil Queen has been Mom for at least four years. Don’t you think that if she’d wanted to kill me before now, she would have?”

 

Emma wondered how he was able to distinguish in his mind which version of his mother had been the Evil Queen and which had been Regina; and in that moment all she could see was her ten year old stranger of a son, telling her his mother was evil and holding up a book as proof. Not for the first time, she wondered if he’d ever considered that by his own logic, it had been the Evil Queen who had adopted him. 

 

“I don’t think your mom’s worried she’s going to kill you,” Emma pointed out. “I think she’s afraid that she might use you against her.”

 

“Why?” Henry asked. “She doesn’t even know what she wants.”

 

Emma looked at him shrewdly. “Do  _ you  _ know what she wants, kid?”

 

Infuriatingly, Henry shrugged. “Probably the same things as mom.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It was late by the time Emma dropped off Henry, who rolled his eyes at the palpable tension between Emma and Regina, who had answered the door before either Henry or Emma could unlock it. 

 

“It’s late, Miss Swan,” Regina said. 

 

“Stop that,” Emma said, brushing her off. “I sent you a text. He’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

 

“Hmm,” said Regina, and thankfully didn’t press the issue. “Would you like to join us for dinner?” 

 

It was tempting, and Emma would have said yes if she hadn’t felt eyes on her the entire walk here. She smiled faintly, enough so that Regina would know it wasn’t a rebuff. “Raincheck?” she asked. 

 

At the worried frown Regina gave her, she wondered if she’d been successful at all. “Sure,” she said. “Are you - “

 

“I’m fine,” Emma said. “I’m doing anything stupid, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Regina replied at length. “You know where to find me if you need me. Anytime.”

 

Killian was out tonight with her father, giving her mother some alone time with Neal and Emma some alone time with herself. She wandered down to the docks anyway, taking in the way the light rippled through the waves, the way that the waves rocked the moored boats. 

 

“Here I am,” she invited to the air around her. “Come get me.”

 

She wasn’t sure if the Evil Queen was watching her, and was aware that it was a little egotistical to think she would be. But then again, Emma had a thick file still in evidence down at the Sheriff’s station proving that Regina only five years ago had been exactly that much of a stalker, so it really wasn’t that unreasonable. 

 

Regina’s comments about Emma not being afraid of the Evil Queen had struck deep, because Emma? Was afraid. Not of the Regina she’d known five years ago and her rage and all the havoc and murder resulting from it, but of whatever subtler thing Regina was still hiding from her about what she’d wanted just three weeks ago. 

 

Emma had been wracking her brains about that because really, what could it possibly be that would actually scare her? She’d seen Regina at - well, not her worst, admittedly, but definitely not her best, and  _ that  _ hadn’t been enough to scare her off forever. And that was Regina before she’d even really started trying to be a decent person. Regina  _ long _ before she’d become something like Emma’s best friend. 

 

Emma would have assumed it was something along the lines of the murder impulses she’d confessed to still having in New York, except Emma couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with her. So for Regina to be hiding something so awful about what she wanted from Emma that didn’t go all the way back to the ancient history of her Evil Queen days - something about Emma? 

 

Yeah. It scared her. 

 

It was also like a bucket of cold water over her head when she started thinking about it, because when did this thing start being an issue? How long had Regina been hiding it? And why,  _ why  _ hadn’t Emma noticed? They’d been not as close lately, since hell and Robin and - and the stuff that had come before - and Emma had been distracted by Hook and a house and trying to deal, but she didn’t think she’d been  _ that  _ bad of a friend. 

 

Then again, it wasn’t like she had a lot of friends to show for her thirty-four years, either. 

 

One thing was for sure - Emma needed to meet the Evil Queen one on one. It might be a shot in the dark hoping that she’d be more forthcoming than Regina, but it was a risk she was willing to take. 

 

The light had nearly gone by the time she finally felt a familiar presence approaching behind her. 

 

“Took you long enough,” Emma said, not turning. 

 

The Evil Queen held out her red jacket to her, and Emma wondered where the hell she’d gotten it. Had she waltzed into the station and no one had questioned it because of who she looked like - not even when she’d taken away Emma’s jacket? But they were friends, it was allowed - Regina had done the same thing a few times before, and the presumption and what it had meant had always made Emma feel a little warm. 

 

Even her words were familiar: “Put this on before you catch your death,” she commanded. 

 

“Wouldn’t want that,” Emma said, but did as instructed if only because it had gotten cold, and she wasn’t trying to win anything with this Regina - yet. 

 

“You’ve figured out which one I am,” the Evil Queen said, smirking through blood red lips. “Congratulations.”

 

Emma couldn’t stop her eyes sweeping up and down her body. It wasn’t the clothes so much as it was the unrepentant swagger, the loss of any attitude the Evil Queen had adopted consciously or unconsciously to promote the idea of softness, susceptibility, self-consciousness. This version of her was powerful and proud of it, no hint of apology in any of the lines of her body from her stiletto boots to her skin tight dress to the makeup mask of her face. 

 

“I know you,” Emma said mildly. 

 

“You’d like to,” the Evil Queen bantered back. Emma thought she should maybe be alarmed by how comfortable this felt, and only smirked back at her.

 

“So,” she said eventually. “You gonna tell me why you came to see me last night and let me think it was the other you?”

 

“How diplomatic,” the Evil Queen sighed, exaggerated disappointment in her tone. “I was hoping this might be more fun.”

 

“Fun,” Emma repeated. “Like how?”

 

In response, she pressed aggressively close, apparently waiting for Emma to move back and regain the space between them, and grinning delightedly when she held her ground. 

 

“Tell me, Emma,” the Evil Queen said, voice low. “Do you remember how we used to fight?”

 

“Sure,” Emma answered easily. “We still fight. We fought last week about Henry’s math homework. Or I guess you don’t remember that. We…. fought last month about your budgetary restrictions on the Sheriff’s department. Which, by the way, are still stupid.”

 

She waved a dismissive hand. “No. That was a disagreement. One we solved rationally over the phone in the same conversation it came up.” She looked critically at Emma. “Or I thought we had.”

 

“Oh,” Emma said, scrunching her forehead. “You mean - you mean like chainsaws and hearts and punching each other?”

 

“So you do remember,” the Evil Queen said with a smile, just enough of an edge to it to keep Emma reminded of who it was she was dealing with. Despite herself, a part of her thrilled the way it always had at the prospect of having it out with this woman, and she hastily pushed it down.

 

“It’d be pretty hard to forget,” Emma remarked steadily. “Regina, where is this going?”

 

“Where it’s going is - maybe you needed me to be evil in order for you to be the Savior,” the Evil Queen said nonchalantly.

 

Emma stared, not quite sure which part of that to address first, but settling on saying, “Is that a past tense or a present tense ‘need’?”

 

“Yes,” she answered, returning her gaze.

 

“Bullshit,” said Emma.

 

“Such a quick response when you’d asked for clarification,” she remarked. “Let’s try something else. Why did you stay in Storybrooke?”

 

“Henry,” Emma said. What was it with people asking that question?

 

“Oh, don’t disappoint me,” said the Evil Queen. “You’ve told me this before. You stayed because of me, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or my fear to myself. You stayed because I goaded you into it. And you stepped up to the plate and became the Savior, because you needed someone poking and goading you into it, and I did that oh so well, and, well - here you are.”

 

A triumphant look had overtaken her face, which was a Regina enough thing that it didn’t worry Emma, except she couldn’t figure out  _ why.  _

 

“Okay, what’s going on?” Emma asked. “What do you get out of trying to convince me I can’t be the Savior without you?”

 

“Can’t a girl try to save her friend’s life?” the Evil Queen asked. “You forget, dear, that I know about your visions now.”

 

Emma had to hold herself back from giving anything away. Mainly because Regina would definitely kill her if she told the Evil Queen anything more about the shears or the visions, but also because there was still, horribly, the lingering doubt in the back of her mind. 

 

_ Do you honestly believe there was a part of me three weeks ago that wanted you dead?  _ Regina’s voice taunted her. 

 

Emma rubbed her ribs, sure she could feel the echoes of where a sword had - or would, she guessed - stab right through her.

 

“Yeah, about that,” Emma said seriously. “Don’t do that again.”

 

“Oops,” said the Evil Queen, smiling unrepentantly. 

 

“Look, what is your gameplan here? Like what do you actually want out of all this?”

 

“It’s quite simple, dear,” said the Evil Queen. “I want the same things as Regina. I’m just going to get them.”

 

“Yeah? And what are those things?”

 

For a moment, Emma thought what crossed her face was something between frustration and rage, and worry flared up hot and bright for just a split second until her face melted back into that terrifying smile she hadn’t seen in years.

 

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” said the Evil Queen. 

 

“You’re the one who insists we’re friends,” Emma said. “Can’t you do better?”

 

“Oh I can, and I will,” she promised. 

 

“Sounds like you’re a lot of talk and no follow through.”

 

“How’s your dearly beloved?” the Evil Queen asked, seemingly apropos of nothing, and Emma tensed, remembering the other Regina’s warnings that Hook might not be safe around her. She hadn’t wanted to ask - hadn’t wanted to ask for the past two years - but  _ dammit _ , she should have, there was more on the line now than she had a right to be fucking with by herself. 

 

“Is that a threat?” Emma asked. 

 

Mock innocently, the Evil Queen shook her head, lips pursed. “Just a question. Is he treating you right?”

 

Emma scoffed and pushed away from the rail on the dock. “Regina.”

 

“Just a question,” the Evil Queen repeated, eyes following her closely. 

 

“You’ve never thought so, for reasons I never really got, I know,” Emma said. 

 

“Haven’t you,” the Evil Queen asked flatly, before smirking again. “Interesting that after two years of silence on the topic, it’s me you’re talking to about this, and not… well, the  _ other  _ me.”

 

Uncomfortable, Emma shrugged. “You’re the one that asked.”

 

“Hmm,” she said, and was quiet for a moment, before saying, apropos of nothing, “So, tell me about your visions.”

 

Emma huffed out a surprised noise before she could censor it. “Not much for subtlety, are you,” she said to cover up her embarrassment, but the Evil Queen’s eyes were glinting in a way that told her she knew exactly what Emma was doing. “I thought you were playing the long con on that.”

 

“I may be exceptionally skilled at playing the long con, but I also know when to get straight to the point,” she told her. “But how are you so sure I’m not still playing it?”

 

“I… guess I’m not?” Emma said, questioningly. 

 

“Hmm,” the Evil Queen said again, but this time her tone was more distant. “Your visions. You die in them.”

 

“You heard that much with your impression act,” Emma said, unimpressed. 

 

“And I’m asking for more information,” said the Evil Queen. “Really, Emma, you’re being deliberately obtuse.”

 

“And you’re deliberately trying to get information out of me I don’t want to give you,” Emma said. “For someone who claims to be my friend, you’re doing a really bad job of it.”

 

“Tell me, have you let the other me in on whatever secrets you’re guarding in this vision?” the Evil Queen asked, irritation and - jealousy? - starting to bleed into her carefully controlled tone. She didn’t wait for Emma’s response, or else she could read the answer in her face, because she scoffed. “The only question then is why are you keeping it from me? Is it because I’m in these visions? Or simply because you’ve been brainwashed into not trusting me?” 

 

“Hey,” Emma objected. “Would I be out here with you,  _ alone _ , if I didn’t trust you?”

 

“You’ve done stupider things,” the Evil Queen sniped. “Like not letting me help you prevent your death.”

 

“I’ve got that under control,” Emma said, but it was unconvincing to her own ears. As if to prove a point, Regina sent a spell towards her without warning. Emma didn’t have time to try to identify it, merely yelped and deflected it with a batting motion. 

 

“ _ Hey _ !” she objected again. “What the hell?”

 

“You won’t tell me who your opponent is, which I suppose is your prerogative,” the Evil Queen said, advancing on her. “But your reflexes need work at the very least.”

 

Two more spells came hurtling toward Emma in quick succession while Regina was speaking, and Emma easily deflected the first and just barely ducked the second. 

 

“What the hell, Regina,” she said again, anger starting to buzz under her skin. 

 

“You’re angry,” the Evil Queen noted pleasantly. “Good.”

 

“We don’t do this,” Emma protested, uneasy despite herself. She and Regina had long had an unspoken rule that they never used their magic against each other that had lasted since their truce to get Henry back from Neverland. It had always felt like a dangerous thing to do when they were only a month or so removed from actually trying to kill each other, and for reasons they’d never really examined too closely - together, at least - it had never really stopped feeling dangerous in different ways.

 

“We should have, and long before this,” the Evil Queen said. “How I ever trained you without making you fight me - well, I suppose that was a weakness that just doesn’t hinder me anymore.”

 

“Regina!” Emma yelped again as two spells clipped her and sent her sprawling. Without thinking, she sent her magic out in a wave toward the Evil Queen, who only tsked. 

 

“Too uncontrolled, too dispersed, too weak,” she criticized. “Get up.”

 

“No,” Emma said. “What are you going to do to me?”

 

“Nothing lethal,” the Evil Queen said, and Emma felt herself lose control of her own limbs as she was lifted up two feet off the ground. Through sheer will, Emma broke out of it and dropped down to the Evil Queen’s laughter. 

 

“Regina, stop it!” Emma shouted. “This isn’t like you?”

 

“And how would you know?” the Evil Queen answered. “We’ve never done this, right? How about adding something you’re more comfortable with?”

 

A sword materialized in Emma’s hands, and she nearly dropped it in a cold sweat, the only thing keeping her grip was that this Regina was  _ crazy  _ in a way that Emma hadn’t completely forgotten but still hadn’t had directed at her in half a decade, and she had no idea what was coming next.

 

“I’m not fighting you,” Emma said, but her voice was shaking in a way that made her ashamed. 

 

“I think you’ll find that you are,” the Evil Queen said. “You want to survive whatever’s happening in these visions of yours? Then fight!” 

 

Emma acted without thinking, knocking the newly materialized sword out of the Evil Queen’s hands before she had a chance to settle her grip and throwing her own to the side. The Evil Queen laughed again - “What, you don’t like your weapon of choice?” - and launched an offensive of her own, keeping Emma on the defensive as the night fell completely around them and their magic glowed in the air and off the water. 

 

Emma kept it up as long as she could. Regina had once told her - very reluctantly, and as a motivation that had completely fallen flat because Emma had taken it as an excuse to not have to train at all - that she suspected Emma was actually more powerful magically than she was. Emma had always idly wondered what a fight between the two of them would actually look like, between Emma’s power and Regina’s power and mastery. She’d wondered again after she’d finally gotten the Dark One out of her, and just as quickly shut that thought down.

 

Finding out was every bit as draining as she’d thought it would be, especially when half of her effort was focused desperately on not touching that cold, dark place of lingering untapped power that had taken up residence in her since she’d been the Dark One. She was flagging by the time the Evil Queen got close enough to actually see her face, and then Emma was horrified to feel the warning signs of another vision coming on. The Evil Queen noticed, fuck,  _ fuck _ , and - 

 

_ Main Street, darkness, cold sweat on her back, a hooded figure before her, a sword sliding neatly through her ribs, a dagger in her hand, Regina’s wide eyes and “Emma, no!” -  _

 

“Emma, Emma!” 

 

Emma came back to herself, doubled over and clutching her ribs. “Fuck,” she said, hoping she hadn’t called out anything revealing. The Evil Queen was gripping her arm with one hand while the other braced against her cheek like a lifeline. 

 

“Where did you go?” she demanded.

 

Emma shook her head, queasy with the need to put as much distance as possible between them and simultaneously lean into the touch. The second one was easier after whatever had just happened, with this version of Regina so strangely insistent, reminding Emma of how she’d been allowed Regina’s touch two years ago, and maybe it was because of this that Emma found herself giving in. 

 

“Is it one of your visions?” the Evil Queen asked, razor sharp focus on Emma. “Tell me, I can help.”

 

Emma wasn’t sure if it had been a vision, or her own anticipation of a vision twisting into a memory, or something else entirely. Hadn’t Regina said that the Evil Queen might have implanted her visions in the first place? The hairs on the back of Emma’s neck where the Evil Queen’s fingers were resting stood on end, and she finally shook her away.

 

“I don’t know,” Emma said, but couldn’t drag her eyes away from the Evil Queen’s, still stuck somewhere in the thick of it. Regina’s eyes, a dagger in Emma’s hand - 

 

“What’s wrong with you?” the Evil Queen asked, the abrasive words coming out concerned in a way only Regina could manage. Emma shook her head. 

 

“What are you doing?” she managed. “What do you want from me?” 

 

The Evil Queen’s eyes flashed - with frustration, with concern, with irritation, with something Emma couldn’t make out - and without warning leaned in and pressed her lips to Emma’s. Emma moaned and responded without thinking. Later, she’d put it down the haze of confusion that still had the world fuzzy around the edges, even as her hand came up to Regina’s cheek and the world was fuzzy in a different way. It was like finding herself unexpectedly in a place she’d been guarding for years without realizing, and finding herself too exhausted and overcome to think or be afraid, not when she was so thoroughly surrounded and claimed by Regina, Regina,  _ Regina.  _

 

She had no idea how long it was until her better sense finally kicked in, and the world settled firmly around her again in odd dissonance with the feel of being wrapped up in Regina’s arms and Regina’s full lips pressed against her racing pulse while Emma gasped desperately for air. Emma pulled away jerkily, wide eyes darting around for something, anything, to cling to. 

 

“What was that for?” she demanded.

 

“You asked me what I wanted,” Regina - _ the Evil Queen _ \- said, and somewhere deep down, Emma wanted to scream with how much that wasn’t an answer. “Like I said, Emma _ \-  _ I’ll play the long con if I have to.”


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a long discussion that Emma had not been invited to - at Regina’s insistence, Snow and Hook’s agreement, David’s confusion, and Henry’s increasingly sullen looks - but they’d all agreed at the end of it to keep news of the Evil Queen’s reappearance separate from Regina’s body quiet as long as possible. 

 

“She’s not hurting anybody -  _ yet _ ,” Snow stressed. “There’s no need to give people a reason to panic until we figure out what she’s up to.”

 

“If she’s up to anything,” Henry muttered, low enough that only Regina could hear where she was sitting next to him. It made her face warm, torn between concern for his safety and unease at his easy defense of the Evil Queen. She settled for quietly shushing him, putting a hand over his where his arms were crossed defensively. 

 

Hook was watching her warily, which wasn’t that out of the norm. What was out of the norm was the intensity behind it, and the way it was actually putting her on edge.

 

“What, no fight, your majesty?” he called after her as she started home when they were done. 

 

“Go home, Hook,” she said wearily. “Emma’s waiting for you.”

 

As expected, he didn’t listen to her, opting instead to step closer to her. Regina was glad she’d sent Henry home ahead of her, and braced her hands on her hips and raised her chin defiantly. 

 

“There’s something going on with you - both of you,” he said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

 

“How astute of you to notice there’s another woman with my face walking around town,” she sniped. 

 

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

 

“I know perfectly well that I don’t. If you have a problem, spit it out so I can go home to my son,” she said. “Since you’ve opted not to go home to your girlfriend.”

 

“If she’s there at all, considering how often she’s out with the Evil bloody Queen,” Hook said.

 

Regina spread her arms wide and let them drop in exasperation. “Hence the meeting we just had that none of us enjoyed,” she said. “We all know there’s something going on there.”

 

“Aye, ‘something’,” Hook said darkly, and Regina bristled. 

 

“Whatever that ‘something’ is, you can hardly pin it on me,” she said. She and Emma hadn’t been close enough for what he was insinuating in longer than she cared to actually admit to him if he was actually feeling threatened enough to be confronting her. “She’s been a good little girlfriend and come home to you at the end of the day and tried to atone for all the things you blame her for around the Dark One mess, up to and including by asking me to break her heart in half for you.”

 

He raised an eyebrow, looking far too smug. “And that really bothered you, didn’t it?”

 

The sluggish rush of rage she felt was enough to make her glad that she’d cut the Evil Queen out of her for the first time that she’d done it. There was a reason she and Hook avoided each other, especially when it came to anything having to do with Emma that didn’t involve keeping her alive; and while it was extremely telling that it was only now that he felt safe enough to break that rule, it was even more telling that Regina felt impotent in the face of it. Even now, Regina’s hands twitched with the urge to strike out at him, magically or otherwise, and a part of her that was empty echoed with her own laughter - 

 

_ If only you’d stayed in the Underworld,  _ she wanted to scream.  _ If only you’d stayed and we’d be rid of you forever -  _

 

It was close to feeling alive again, as close to the edge as she’d skirted since she’d crushed her own heart and watched the wind carry off the dust. 

 

She took a step back, shaking. Hook still had that godawful smirk on his face -  _ how  _ was Emma attracted to that? - and let her go quietly. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It didn’t take long before it was impossible to keep the Evil Queen’s reemergence quiet. The Evil Queen might have stolen Regina’s wardrobe - or at least, a wardrobe that Regina had once worn in Storybrooke - but she wasn’t entirely interested in laying low. Six times in the past week and a half, Regina had gotten bemused stares and a “ _ Did you forget something, Mayor Mills?”  _ when she walked into any establishment, and once, very memorably, a bank teller arguing with her that she couldn’t deposit a check twice. 

 

Regina initially gritted her teeth and tried to laugh it off and play it as though her memory were going. Unfortunately for her, it seemed that the Evil Queen also wasn’t interested in playing along, and had eventually staged a meeting in Granny’s when she  _ knew  _ Regina would be coming into get her midday coffee. 

 

It would have been a bit of an overstatement to say that all hell had broken loose, but… well. It had taken statements from Regina, Snow, and Emma (whose rather testy response to being asked to provide one had been “Oh, so you’re including me in things now?”) to calm things down into a tense, but calm, state of constant anticipation. 

 

A week and a half later, Regina was sick and tired of the constant scrutiny anytime she walked through a door. 

 

“What?” she barked as the door to Granny’s thudded closed behind her. “It’s me, not her, go back to your business.”

 

“Sounds like something she would say,” remarked someone snidely, but not unfairly. Regina bristled, but slunk over to join Emma and Snow in a corner booth, where Snow obligingly made room for her. 

 

“They’re just worried because they can’t tell you apart,” Snow said soothingly. 

 

Regina knew that, and frankly didn’t need to have it explained at her like she was one of Snow’s second graders, no matter how well meaning Snow was. She laughed, halfway between despair and disbelief. “And you can?” she asked without thinking. 

 

Regina knew it was a mistake that moment Snow drew herself up in that self-righteous way she did, because it also meant that she would  _ think  _ about it now. 

 

“Of course!” Snow said. “I mean it’s difficult, but I’m always confident that I’m speaking to you.”

 

Regina’s frayed nerves snapped. “What? Don’t tell me  _ you’re  _ not sharing with the class now, Snow.”

 

“What?” asked Snow, all doe eyed confusion. 

 

“Regina, lay off,” Emma muttered.

 

Regina ignored her. “Are you telling me the Evil Queen has come around and you’ve waved your hands at her and said, begone, evil witch?” Regina asked Snow. 

 

“Well, no,” said Snow, narrowing her eyes. “She just hasn’t come around. But to be fair, Larry had a point - that _did_ sound like something she would say.”

 

“Oh for God’s -”

 

“It’s her, mom,” Emma broke in.

 

But Snow was regarding her suspiciously now. “How can  _ you  _ tell, Emma?” she asked, and Emma’s eyes ran up and down Regina’s form, embarrassingly prompting a blush that Emma seemed to be able to read even on her tan skin. 

 

“Emma?” Snow asked again, and Emma was the one to blush this time. 

 

“I just can,” she said. “It’s all out there if you know what you’re looking for.”

 

It was the nicest code for  _ sex appeal  _ that Regina had ever heard, and it made her furious for all the wrong reasons. Did she look like a sack of potatoes in comparison? Was it the bags under her eyes? Was it - surely not the frustration without the rage? Regina suddenly wished that instead of avoiding Emma she’d thought to take a page out of her own damn book and stalked her until she’d witnessed one of those clandestine meetings the two seemed to be having, and seen with her own two eyes just what this  _ difference  _ between the two of them was that had Emma honest to God blushing.

 

“Thank you  _ so  _ much, Miss Swan,” Regina snapped, and Emma grimaced, chastened. 

 

“Regina, I didn’t mean it like that,” Emma hurried to say, as if it mattered, as if they’d ever acknowledged anything like this between them at any point in the past when Emma didn’t have a useless romantic tagalong and Regina didn’t have one too many versions of herself on the street that Emma was apparently more attracted to. 

 

“ _ What  _ is going on?” Snow demanded, looking between them. Neither answered her, Regina sulking down into her seat and Emma determinedly looking out the window. “You’re both acting worse than your teenage son right now.”

 

“Nothing,” Emma said, slouching and definitely bearing a resemblance to Henry in a mood.

 

Breakfast mostly passed uneventfully, except for the way Emma refused to look at Regina except in glances. If Regina didn’t know better, she might call her behavior  _ guilty _ , but after thinking about it, she realized she didn’t actually know better at all. For all the Charmings’ desire to keep their daughter out of the clutches of the Evil Queen, they were oddly loathe to do anything about the Evil Queen’s unrestrained access to said daughter - or vice versa - which was driving Regina more than slightly out of her mind whenever she was confronted with the proof of it. 

 

It was also causing her to make questionable decisions.

 

“Emma, are you feeling alright?” Snow was asking, apparently having moved onto other causes of Emma’s moodiness.  “You aren’t coming down with something, are you?”

 

“Why not ask the Evil Queen?” Regina asked offhandedly, sipping her coffee. 

 

“Regina!” hissed Snow. 

 

Emma put down her own cup with a little more force than was necessary. “I think I’m about done here,” she said. “Mom, I’ll get you back.”

 

Snow nodded, sending Regina a look that plainly said  _ fix it _ . Regina rolled her eyes, but followed Emma outside. 

 

“Emma!” she called. “I’m sorry.”

 

“I’m not in the mood to deal with you getting jealous of  _ yourself _ ,” Emma said, turning around and pulling her hair out of her coat. “You know how ridiculous that is, right?”

 

“It is not jealousy!” Regina objected, but at Emma’s disbelieving raised eyebrow, she amended herself. “Okay, fine, it’s not  _ entirely  _ jealousy. Why are you protecting her, Emma? Please, I’m not - I’m just worried for you.”

 

“Yeah, well, don’t be,” Emma said. “I can take care of myself.”

 

It was said vehemently enough that Regina took a step back reflexively. “I know you can,” Regina said cautiously. “I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

 

“Haven’t you?” Emma countered, but just as quickly deflated and scrubbed a hand over her face. “Look, I’m just really tired of people telling me they don’t think I’m up to this.”

 

“People?” Regina asked. “Like who? And up to what? Figuring out your visions?” 

 

“You! My parents! Hook! Archie! Everybody!” Emma said, drawing stares from the pedestrian traffic on Main Street. Regina rolled her eyes and reached out for Emma’s arm, drawing her closer in an attempt to get her to keep their private conversation private. Emma shook her off, excess energy practically vibrating out of her.  

 

“Like that,” Emma added. “Stop that.”

 

“Stop… being your friend?” Regina asked, bewildered. 

 

“Just - the touching. It’s confusing,” Emma said. 

 

Regina stared. It wasn’t as though touching between them was common, exactly, but it wasn’t exactly foreign either. Unless there was some third party making it confusing - Regina was halfway to trying to figure out what the pirate had said now before suspicion suddenly boiled thick in her blood.

 

“Just _what_ exactly have you and the Evil Queen been up to?” she demanded, and by Emma’s guilty look away, she knew she was right. 

 

“Regina, just leave it alone,” Emma muttered. “It’s fine.”

 

“Clearly it’s not fine if I can’t so much as touch your elbow without you freaking out on me,” Regina retorted. “Has she hurt you?”

 

“Why is that always your first assumption?” Emma asked. “You’re the one who kept saying that you wouldn’t have hurt me before you split from her. Were you lying, or something?”

 

“What? No!” Regina denied. 

 

“Then what?” 

 

Regina didn’t immediately respond, more stunned by Emma’s angry shuttered expression than she maybe should have been, and feeling like somehow she’d gone back in time to those early days when they hadn’t known each other and hadn’t cared to beyond the thrill of whatever fight they could provoke out of each other. And now that Regina didn’t want a fight - hadn’t wanted an actual fight in  _ weeks  _ \- all she was left with was a feeling that she didn’t know this woman in front of her. And that maybe she didn’t even know herself. 

 

“I’m always worried about what I’ll do when I’m not in control of myself,” she said, taking a chance. “That’s  _ especially  _ true when the part of myself that I’ve always had to control is literally a different person, and not just a part of my mind. I know what she’s done. I know what  _ I’ve  _ done. You’ve never lived through it - no, Emma, you  _ haven’t _ ,” Regina said, catching Emma’s look. “The way I was when we first met? I was just a shadow of her by that point, dulled by years of monotony and a love for Henry. You have no idea who I was or what I was capable of. And I’m worried that now you look at her and you see a friend, and that I was stupid enough, or egotistical enough, a few weeks ago when I said that no part of me could ever hurt you and you’ve taken it as some sort of - I don’t even know, a rallying cry for her essential goodness or something.” 

 

Some of the anger had fallen off of Emma’s face as Regina had talked, but there was still a wariness keeping her at a distance that made Regina hurt. “You keep talking about controlling her,” she said eventually. “Have you ever thought that maybe she doesn’t like that?”

 

Regina nearly laughed. “I’m sure she doesn’t. But it’s not an option she gets. She’s my responsibility.”

 

Emma actually looked concerned, for no reason Regina could parse. “Regina,” she said, “that’s not healthy.”

 

And that did make Regina laugh. “You’re one to talk,” she said. “You’re still seeing Doctor Hopper, are you not?”

 

“You know, that actually does make me one to talk,” Emma said, crossing her arms. “At least I’m dealing with my problems instead of trying to split myself into two people and kill one of them.”

 

“Oh? So you’ve made your decision regarding the shears, then?” Regina taunted her, and Emma looked away. “That’s what I thought.”

 

“Regardless of what my decision ends up being, I know that trying to control a part of me that’s so big that I see it as a different person isn’t a workable solution,” Emma said quietly. “Aren’t you tired?”

 

“Of course I’m tired,” Regina snapped. “I’m exhausted. Why else do you think I split her from me in the first place?”

 

“I don’t know. Why did you?”

 

Regina didn’t want to have this conversation, and especially not in the middle of the day in front of Granny’s with a dozen different potential eavesdroppers, including Snow White, liable to close in at any moment. 

 

“It doesn’t matter. What  _ does  _ matter now is what she wants. Surely she’s let you in on this by now, between all your chats,” Regina said. 

 

Emma shrugged, infuriatingly not rising to Regina’s bait. “All she’s said is that wants the same things you want. She’s you, after all.”

 

“She is  _ not  _ me,” Regina said. 

 

“Debatable,” Emma said, looking at her inscrutably. “Anyway, that’s the answer. That’s what she said.”

 

The same thing she’d told Snow weeks ago, and it was still leaving Regina’s mind spinning with no traction. Emma was still watching her closely for something, some reaction, and Regina finally said, “What?”

 

“Well, what do you want?” Emma asked. “I don’t feel like this is a trick question.”

 

If only Emma knew how false a statement that was. “I don’t know,” Regina said. 

 

“Sure you do. How do you not know?”

 

“Because  _ I don’t get to want _ ,” Regina snapped. 

 

Emma stared at her. “What?” she asked. 

 

Regina sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, severely regretting the entirety of this conversation. “Wanting things is what created the Evil Queen in the first place, and the last few years have sure as  _ hell _ shown me that wanting things, even while I’m not the Evil Queen, only leads to terrible consequences for everyone associated with me.”

 

“So you think it’s, what? Karmic retribution?” Emma asked, her brow furrowed in apparent disbelief. 

 

“Isn’t it?” Regina asked quietly. 

 

Something about that answer was somehow the thing that finally broke Emma’s expression wide open, but all Regina found there was pity. “ _ Regina _ ,” she said, and reached out a hand which Regina shrugged off instinctively. 

 

“Don’t,” she said sharply, and visibly stung, Emma retreated. Regina only had a second to feel a pang of regret before Emma drew a few steps further away. 

 

“I don’t think you get what the situation is,” Emma said. 

 

“Which one?” Regina asked, snorting.

 

“Take your pick,” Emma said, and glanced at her meaningfully. “Just maybe think about it. And maybe be a little more kind to yourself while you’re at it.”

 

“To myself or to her?” Regina asked as Emma turned to leave.

 

“Take your pick,” Emma repeated, and was gone. 

 

Snow must have been watching the entire thing from inside Granny’s, because she appeared at Regina’s shoulder approximately five seconds later. “You alright?” she asked, her eyes big with concern. 

 

“Fine,” Regina said, lying through her teeth. 

 

“Looked like some argument,” Snow prompted.

 

“Discussion,” Regina corrected. “And, well… we’ve had worse.”

 

“Funny,” Snow said, “I thought for the last few weeks you two had been getting along better than you had since - “ but she cut herself off abruptly, making irritation twitch in Regina’s chest. 

 

“Since?” she asked leadingly. “Emma became the Dark One?” 

 

Snow grimaced. “Sorry. I don’t like saying it.”

 

“Maybe that’s part of the problem,” Regina said, speculatively. “We’re all talking around it, aren’t we? We have been since it happened.”

 

Snow was looking at her quizzically, which wasn’t quite the response she’d expected to bringing up the virtually taboo subject of Dark One Emma, but it was her next words that made her heart stop.

 

“Yes, it’s like you said last week.”

 

Regina stared at her, a sick feeling rising in the pit of her stomach. “What’s like I said last week?” she asked. 

 

“About Emma, and needing to stop avoiding the fact that she was the Dark One,” Snow replied. “I didn’t agree at the time, but I’ve had time to think about it and I think you’re right. And I’m so glad you’re brave enough to think of Emma and bring it up,” she added, grabbing Regina’s arm and smiling warmly. 

 

“Snow,” Regina started. “I… didn’t have that conversation with you.”

 

“What do you mean? Of course you did,” Snow said. “Unless…” The other shoe dropped and her eyes went wide in horror. “Oh no.”

 

“I guess you can’t actually tell us apart,” Regina said, trying to quell the panic that was now trying to interfere with the vague nausea.

 

“Regina, I am so sorry,” Snow said. 

 

“What did you tell her? What does she know?” Regina asked. “Emma’s visions? Your asinine idea that they’re about the Final Battle?”

 

Snow shook her head helplessly. “I don’t think so? I know the idea’s upsetting to you, so I haven’t brought it up with you. Any of you, I mean.”

 

“Well that’s one piece of good news in this whole mess,” Regina muttered. “What else have you been talking about with anyone you thought was me in the last few weeks that could have been sensitive?”

 

“I don’t know,” Snow said. “Um. Neal moving to solids?” 

 

“ _ Sensitive _ , Snow! Think!”

 

“I’m trying! I think - really it’s just Emma as the Dark One. If you’re not the one who’s been concerned about that, then she’s brought it up a few times.”

 

“Why?” Regina wondered out loud. “All the things… and that’s what she wants to know? What do you want?” she whispered, looking around as if the Evil Queen would materialize before them, smirk firmly in place. 

 

“Maybe she just wants Emma to be okay,” Snow said, breaking in. 

 

“And why would she want that?” Regina asked, scoffing.

 

“Maybe because Emma’s not doing well, lately, and it’s clear it’s not all down to having those shears,” Snow said. “Regina, maybe it’s time we consider that she’s not so bad this time around.”

 

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Regina asked, incredulous. “You’ve spent the majority of your adult life fighting her and suffering at her hands. You know exactly what she’s like, and you want to tell me she’s  _ not so bad _ ?” 

 

“All she wants to do is help Emma and pose as you,” Snow said. “And while the latter is inconvenient, it’s not exactly harming anyone.”

 

Everything in Regina begged to disagree. “If somebody stole my social security number, would you be saying the same thing?” 

 

“Please, it’s not like this is identity theft, Regina,” Snow said, and Regina wanted to actually howl with frustration. “She’s you. Do we even have valid social security numbers with the curse and everything?”

 

“She is  _ not me _ !” Regina said. “What more do I have to do to prove this to you people?” 

 

“Why does this matter so much to you?” Snow asked. “Can’t you just be glad that this is all the tricks she’s playing?”

 

“This is all the tricks she wants you to  _ think  _ she’s playing,” Regina said. “Snow, what the hell is wrong with you?”

 

But Snow was looking at her pityingly. “What’s wrong with  _ you _ ?” she asked. “Regina, I’ve never seen you like this before. I’m worried.”

 

“Worry about your daughter,” Regina snapped. 

 

“I’m capable of doing both at the same time,” Snow said dryly. “Can you just come home with me? We’ll have a nice cup of tea. We haven’t talked, just you and me, for a while.”

 

“We just had coffee,” Regina pointed out somewhat peevishly.

 

“It wasn’t tea,” Snow insisted, undeterred, and tugged her along toward the loft by an arm she linked through Regina’s. “I know you’re worried about the Evil Queen, and you’re worried about Emma, but this has got to stop. I don’t think she’s that person anymore.”

 

“What?” Regina said, stopping them on the sidewalk. “You’re telling me you think the Evil Queen is reformed?” 

 

“I think  _ you  _ reformed the Evil Queen,” Snow corrected her pointedly, and there was the hysteria again, because Snow didn’t  _ know _ , she didn’t know the daily struggle of pushing down the urge to murder and maim, how sweet the fire-quick rush of rage-fueled magic through her veins was, how powerful the knowledge that she could control everything she saw with a little well-placed fear. She didn’t know how Regina couldn’t ever rest from the Evil Queen for even an hour, how even when she was dormant in her mind, there was always the risk of something waking her up until she was worse than before. 

 

Now, there was only a dull buzzing, a cavernous lack of something that had once been larger than life in Regina’s mind, and as much as the relief of not having to constantly fight it brought her to her knees, it was getting harder and harder to deny that all she felt now was hollow and dull and afraid of all that space, just waiting to be taken up. 

 

The Evil Queen, reformed? Regina still lived with the things she’d been borne of. She knew better, even if she’d fooled everyone else into thinking otherwise these last few years.

 

“Even if she’s not as bad as she was,” Regina said, drawing close to make sure Snow heard  _ every word _ , “you’re not seeing the real her. Pretending to be me - all she’s doing now is contorting herself into worse, more manipulative shapes.”

 

Snow was unintimidated -  _ damn her _ \- and simply returned Regina’s gaze steadily. “Well, Regina,” she said, “what  _ is  _ the real you? Because apparently I’ve never known.”

 

“You’re looking at me,” Regina said. “What more do you want?”

 

Something like comprehension was starting to break over Snow’s face, and Regina couldn’t fathom why - or why it made her want to run. 

 

“Regina,” Snow said slowly, “why do you keep asking me that?” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Despite Emma’s intentions to go to work after parting ways with Regina, she reversed course when she was about halfway there, figuring her dad wouldn’t actually mind. Too much, anyway.

 

Whether there was still enough of that potion in her to do the trick or whether she just go lucky, she found Aladdin the first place she looked: a bench overlooking the harbor. Jasmine wasn’t anywhere in sight - Emma guessed she was in school - which made things easier. 

 

“Savior,” he greeted her genially once he noticed her. 

 

She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t make it so formal. Emma’s fine.”

 

“Emma,” he corrected himself, smiling. “Care to take a seat?”

 

“Sure,” she said, and settled next to him. Now that she was here, she didn’t completely know how she wanted to start this conversation, and she took the delay, settling slowly into the chilled metal and pulling the lapels of her coat a little more tightly around her.

 

Although he didn’t look at her once she’d taken him up on the offer, Aladdin seemed to notice her hesitation. “It’s hard to believe so much water exists in one place,” he said. “Seas and oceans were like myths where I came from. Traders would tell us stories, but it’s hard to really get your head around the idea of it.”

 

“I can see that,” Emma murmured. “Are you liking it here?”

 

He grinned. “Very much. But I sense that you didn’t come find me for small talk.”

 

“I need you to teach me how to use the shears,” Emma blurted out before she could change her mind. “Just in case.”

 

Aladdin cocked his head in confusion. “You mean you haven’t already used them? I assumed when so much time had passed that you’d figured it out on your own.”

 

She shook her head. “There’s been… a lot of opinions about me using them,” she said. He looked like he was about to object. “Including my own. I’ve been pretty undecided.”

 

“Then why now?” 

 

She shrugged, looking back over the water. “I haven’t. Not completely. I just feel like… you know, if the time comes, and I realize suddenly what needs to happen, I need to know what to do. Not just stand there and let things happen.”

 

“I do know,” he said, bumping her shoulder. “Spoken like a true Savior.”

 

“Thanks,” she said quietly.

 

He regarded her thoughtfully. “I gave them to you because I have no intention of using them. You know that, right?”

 

“Yeah. Figured it out,” she said. “And I appreciate the concern. Just, do me a favor? And trust that my reasons will be the right ones if I do use them?”

 

“Always did,” Aladdin said readily. “Why else do you think I gave them to you?”

 

“Solidarity? Savior-ness in the face of a desperate woman?” she guessed.

 

“You’re not desperate,” he said, rolling his eyes. 

 

“Not yet,” she agreed, pulling the shears out of her coat pocket and unwrapping them from their protective leather. In her hands, they looked normal and unassuming, something she might keep in her garage for her backyard garden, now that she’d graduated up the rungs of adulting to having both a garage and a backyard. She held them out with a smile she hoped was winning. “Teach me?”

 

He chuckled a little, and shifted to face her. “Keep hold of those, then.”

 

“Wait, we’re doing it here?” she asked, surprised. It was a weekday morning, but it wasn’t like this area was deserted or anything. 

 

“Sure. They won’t see anything, and it’s not dangerous to them,” he reassured her. “This is all you.”

 

“Will  _ you _ be able to see anything?” she asked, already beginning to have her doubts again. 

 

“No. The most I can do is guide you through it,” he said, which didn’t do a lot to inspire her confidence. 

 

“Okay,” Emma said doubtfully. “Don’t let me cut anything important.”

 

“You won’t unless you’re intending to,” Aladdin said. “Now, close your eyes.”

 

She did. “Weird how learning new magic tricks always starts like this,” she commented.

 

“This isn’t exactly a magic trick,” Aladdin’s voice said dryly. “It’s easier to see without seeing.”

 

“Because  _ that  _ makes sense,” she muttered.

 

Aladdin cleared his throat. “Emma,” he chided.

 

“Right,” she said, sobering up. “Sorry, seeing without seeing. Go on.”

 

“First, feel the shears in your hand. They’re a powerful magical object, so you should be able to feel the magical presence of them.”

 

It took a few seconds to get past the cool smoothness of the surface of the handles against her skin, but once she did, the power in the object jumped out at her. “Okay,” she said. “Got it. Now what?”

 

“Follow that magic. Take your time. You’ll know once you’ve done it.”

 

_ That’s it?  _ she wanted to snark again, but dutifully, she tried to do as instructed. She was glad for the on and off training a much more tempestuous Regina had sunk into her a few years back, because this was definitely not a beginner lesson, and Aladdin was clearly assuming she knew how to manipulate magic. Clumsily, she followed the magic into the shears and them through her hand, extending up through her arm and surrounding her like a cloud.  _ Almost.  _

 

Aladdin was waiting silently and patiently. She could sense him and his magic, too, but his stayed contained and, for the moment, inert. 

 

“I don’t think I’m there, but I’m not sure where else to go,” she admitted.

 

“What are you seeing?”

 

“A golden aura?” she said. “Sort of like a web, surrounding me.”

 

“Hmm. Not quite, but almost,” he said. “Try to see the connections. Pick a thread and follow it out from you, or vice versa, if that’s easier.”

 

She took a deep breath. Connections, he’d said. Okay. She focused until the threads in the web became clearer and picked one at random, picking at it lightly until she could see that it wasn’t completely woven in, but stretched out on and on, presumably finding its end and terminating beyond where she could see. 

 

Well, she wouldn’t be following that. She tried the opposite, looking for a thread that connected to something a little closer. Aladdin’s magical signature was difficult to overlook, and she was surprised when she did find one of her threads connecting to him. 

 

And suddenly - 

 

“Whoa,” Emma gasped. 

 

That was all she’d needed, apparently - once she’d seen it, the basis of the entire world was into sudden, stark relief against the darkness of her eyelids, lit up by millions of threads connecting each living thing to dozens, if not hundreds, of other living things. 

 

It was power like she’d never known it, not even as the Dark One. So much possibility at her fingertips, all the magic in all the world laid bare before her, the strings of fate ready for her to pluck at them and change the future on a whim. It called to something dark in her she’d thought she’d buried, and she could feel it rushing to the surface in an onslaught of rage and utter control before she slammed it down in a panic.

 

In the back of her awareness, Aladdin laughed. “That’s my sign that you’re there,” he said. “You okay?”

 

“Uh,” she said, eyes still firmly closed, not trusting what she would be if she opened them. “I don’t know.”

 

“Okay, that happens, especially to people like Saviors,” Aladdin said calmly. Clearly no one had filled him in on her recent history, and that was just fine with Emma. “Why don’t you open your eyes?” 

 

Emma did, and immediately felt better. Her fingers had tightened reflexively on the handles of the shears, and she was alarmed to see that she’d apparently gotten them into a position where she could cut something without having realized it. She dropped them immediately, her heart beating fast, and Aladdin, still calmly, bent to retrieve them like they were an ordinary pair of scissors. 

 

“Here you are,” he said, handing them back. The glinted in the sunlight, gold and burnished as the superfine threads they had the ability to sever, and Emma shook her head. 

 

“Why don’t you hang onto those for a minute,” she said, trying to sound less shaken than she was.

 

Aladdin pocketed them with careful movements, which Emma felt was more for her benefit than his. “I felt the same way the first time I saw what you did,” he told her.  “It’s a little overwhelming.”

 

Emma sincerely doubted that, but she nodded gamely anyway. “You can say that again,” Emma said. Her hair felt suddenly too tight in her ponytail, and she reached up with only slightly shaking fingers to pull it out, shaking her hair loose around her in its normal shades of golden blonde. “What was it you were saying about Saviors?” she asked to distract Aladdin from the way he was looking at her curiously.

 

“Oh. Just that by nature of the role, we affect more people’s lives, which means more threads for us,” Aladdin said. “Hazards of the job.”

 

“So not everybody feels as…” Wordlessly, she gestured to herself. 

 

“I think everybody does, actually,” he said thoughtfully. “Everybody who deserves the power, anyway. Kind of like being the Savior, that way.”

 

“Man, do I know a guy who should never get his hands on those,” Emma said, mostly to herself, and thinking about Gold. They’d been lucky that he’d been so preoccupied with Belle and the impending birth of their child while all of this was going on - Snow had told Emma that Regina had actually gone to him for help with the Evil Queen Problem, as she called it, and Gold had told her it wasn’t his problem until the Evil Queen came and knocked down his door. 

 

Emma suspected Regina had wished that would actually happen, but there hadn’t been any sign of it actually happening. As Emma understood it, Regina and Gold had mostly resolved their longstanding issues before the split, so if Regina had been right about things before she’d gotten scared and changed her mind, Emma wasn’t holding her breath that any Regina would be going after Rumpelstiltskin anytime soon. 

 

“You haven’t told many people that you have them, right?” Aladdin asked, a little concerned.

 

She shook her head, but she made a mental note to make sure nobody did anything stupid. Or worse yet, had already done something stupid. “Just my family. And my boyfriend.” 

 

“Just be careful, then,” Aladdin advised. “Are you ready to try again?”

 

Emma took a breath and steeled herself, making sure she had a tighter than normal reign on the remnants of the Dark One she’d just smacked down again. She had a sneaking suspicion she knew why Regina hadn’t wanted her using these things - but then, none of this was for Regina to decide. 

 

“I’m ready,” she affirmed, reaching out for the shears Aladdin had ready and waiting for her. 

 

It was easier this time around now that she’d seen the threads and the way they worked, and she took a deep breath, trying to focus on the intricacy of it rather than the heady sense of possibility and future that would have the Dark One rearing her ugly head in a split second. It was beautiful, and she tried to keep her distance by admiring it like a spectator would admire a painting in an art gallery: a static thing, a snapshot of a moment in someone’s imagination, frozen forever in time. Harmless. 

 

“Now what?” Emma asked, eyes closed. 

 

“Since you’re trying to cut yourself away from your fate specifically as the Savior, you need to find the thing that binds you to that fate,” Aladdin’s voice instructed her. “That’s the tricky part, since you’ll need to sort through all the threads connecting you to other people.”

 

Emma’s mouth went dry. “Is it always a person?” she asked.

 

“That’s the way the threads work,” Aladdin said. “Why? Do you think it’s connected to something inanimate?”

 

Emma didn’t  _ think _ anything. Regina’s face was already flashing through her mind, her voice ringing clear and distinct: 

 

_ And you became the Savior, because you needed someone poking and goading you into it, and I did that oh so well. _

 

To hear the other Regina tell it, she’d always been the Savior - being the Savior was hardwired in her DNA, potentially because of a prophecy she’d been born to fulfill. But didn’t that put them right back where Emma had started - bound by fate to Regina, one way or the other, and hurtling toward a fight that Emma wasn’t at all convinced Regina wasn’t part of? 

 

One that Regina herself wasn’t even convinced anymore that she wasn’t a part of?

 

“No,” Emma finally said, voice hoarse. “I know who it is.”

 

As if by the magic of her words alone, the thread binding her to Regina revealed itself under her searching fingers, branching off like a split end when she followed it: one to town hall where Regina was no doubt brooding in her office, and the other -

 

“Shit,” Emma said, opening her eyes and fumbling with the shears. “Take these, please.”

 

“Emma,” Aladdin said, startled. 

 

“ _ Now, _ ” Emma hissed, just before Regina rounded the bend in the path a quarter mile away. It wasn’t a mystery which one it was, either, with the sheer black pantyhose and the pencil skirt.  _ God,  _ when was the last time Regina had even worn those?

 

Fortunately Aladdin had taken back the shears and slipped them away, but Emma didn’t like the way he was looking at her knowingly. 

 

“Well, what have we here?” Regina said when she drew up level with them. “Two Saviors for the price of one.”

 

Emma spared a passing thought that she was glad Aladdin didn’t know Regina well enough to notice something was off. 

 

“Hi, Regina,” she said. “What got you out of town hall before 5?” 

 

Regina actually fucking  _ pouted _ . “Exercise is good for the troubled mind,” she said. “It’s a lovely day.”

 

Emma decided to let all of that just pass on by. Aladdin was standing up anyway, clearly eager to make an escape from a situation only he and Emma realized was awkward - and not even for all the reasons it actually  _ was  _ awkward. 

 

“Mayor Mills,” he greeted her. “I need to get going anyway. Enjoy the day.”

 

He left Emma with a significant look behind Regina’s back, which she wasn’t stupid enough to return when Regina was watching her face. Regina surprised her by grabbing her hand and pulling her upright.

 

“Anyone would think I made him uncomfortable,” she complained to Emma. 

 

“Imagine that,” said Emma. “Where are we going?”

 

“Maybe I just wanted to see you,” Regina said without answering. “You haven’t come to see me recently.”

 

Only because she’d holed herself up in her vault, and Emma didn’t like being there alone with her for reasons that had nothing to do with her safety. 

 

Emma looked around, suddenly suspicious even though she’d just seen where the other Regina was. “You didn’t plan this, right?” she asked. “Your other half isn’t about to stumble across us so I get a lecture later on?”

 

Regina laughed. “No, but it’s an idea,” she said thoughtfully. 

 

“Stop it.”

 

“Hm. It is curious that she’s the one that got jealousy,” Regina said, and Emma shrugged. She was figuring out that this version of Regina pretty much took what she wanted, so she didn’t really think there was much fuel for that particular fire.

 

“Is there really anything for you to be jealous of?” she asked. 

 

“You know - you’ve got a point,” Regina said, smiling with only an edge of terrifying to it. Emma thought she maybe should have been concerned by how much she was taking that in stride these days, but then she’d known Regina well before the split, and this side of her hadn’t scared her in years. 

 

It had actually been a shock when Regina had confessed in New York that she’d wanted to rip Hook’s throat out when he’d come back from the Underworld. In retrospect, she regretted the way she’d frozen. Clearly Regina  _ hadn’t  _ ripped out Hook’s throat, and just as clearly, she’d always lived with the impulse for violence just under her skin. Emma of all people had always known that. It was just that Regina hadn’t really shown that in a while. Especially with the whole Robin Hood thing, she’d been almost… docile. But she’d been happy in a way she’d never been before, and that’s what Emma was here for, and so she’d been happy for her.

 

Emma did wonder if she asked  _ this  _ Regina about Robin what her answers would be, especially since this was also the Regina who had wanted to rip out Hook’s throat. 

 

It probably wasn’t a safe road to wander down. Emma shook her head and pulled herself out of it, discovering that while she hadn’t been paying attention, Regina had linked their arms together. 

 

“Are you trying to get me off guard again so you can ambush me?” Emma asked, but didn’t pull away. 

 

“I think I’m offended,” Regina said, but smiled in way that said Emma probably wasn’t too far off base. 

 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Emma bantered back. There was a secluded little copse coming up ahead of them, and she suspected that whatever Regina had wanted her for was lying in wait there. “You know, you don’t need to keep doing this.”

 

“Training you? Befriending you? Trying to help save your life?” 

 

Emma rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

 

“I do,” Regina agreed. “But until you tell me what’s in those visions of yours, I’m afraid I’m just going to have to cover all my bases.”

 

“Training me, befriending me, trying to save my life?” Emma guessed. 

 

“Precisely,” Regina said. “Is it really so much trouble for you?”

 

“No,” Emma said, and it was the truth. She was a terrible student, always had been, but that didn’t stop her wishing every time some new baddie came to town and she was straining and panicking with her untrained magic that she’d stuck with Regina’s training for longer. Maybe tried to antagonize her less. They’d both kind of never brought it up again after that time she’d almost fallen to her death and Emma had only just managed to save herself, floating up the gorge to see Regina’s face pinched and white as a sheet looking down at her. 

 

Although - this was probably also the Regina who had dangled her over the gorge in the first place, come to think of it. Snappish, impulsive, manipulative, crazy grin. 

 

“I do wonder sometimes if you’re not actually afraid of me,” Regina said. 

 

Emma snorted. “Please, your majesty. You never managed to kill me in six years. I  _ know  _ you.”

 

“That bodes well for me, then,” Regina said, and blasted her with a wall of magic into the little cove of trees now ten feet away before Emma could even sense her intentions. 

 

Once secluded from the main path, Emma crouched into a defensive position. Regina was nowhere to be seen. She looked around her slowly, reaching out with her magic for good measure, and was shocked when she immediately locked in on Regina poised cat-like in a tree above her head. Without looking, Emma sent a blast of her own magic above her head, just enough to dislodge her, and was delighted when she fell with a shriek in an improbable tangle of ripped pantyhose and button-up blouse, only catching herself in a cloud of purple once she was mid-air. 

 

Regina’s game was hide and seek today, apparently, which was just as well, because Emma was still exhausted from her last lesson involving defensive measures, which had mostly ended with Emma cranky and on her ass, especially with Regina insisting on throwing in a whole range of weapons into the mix after Emma’s tangentially sword-related freakout in the first session Regina had sprung on her.

 

But today was apparently magic only, and it was like she couldn’t guess wrong. Emma was flat out grinning by the third time she’d caught Regina hiding in a tree and nudged her enough to provoke yelps and curses out of her. 

 

“Stop putting yourself in a place where you’re going to fall if you don’t like it,” Emma called up reasonably while Regina tried to right herself again before she fell all the way out. 

 

“And deprive you of all the fun you’re having?” Regina called back, irritated and flustered but  _ knowing _ , and it only made Emma grin harder. 

 

The world had narrowed without her noticing by the time she realized that she wasn’t instinctively reaching out for Regina’s distinct magical signature - it was the thread that bound them together she’d seen for the first time half an hour ago. 

 

In the back of her mind, sirens started to wail - she didn’t have the shears anymore, and had no idea how this was happening of what else she might be able to do unintentionally with this expansive world at her fingertips, ripe for the plucking. 

 

But the larger part of her was grinning with the joy and power of her own magic thrumming through her. Why hadn’t they done this before? Why hadn’t Regina ever told her magic could feel this good? It felt like the air between them when Emma had first come to Storybrooke, crackling with possibility. It felt like a thousand times Emma had had a craving to see her and Henry once they’d become friends. It felt like the magnetism of Regina’s dark eyes pulling her close, close. 

 

Regina was moving around in the foliage behind her, Emma knew, but was content to let her keep at it, preoccupied with the myriad of threads glowing bright around her and the way they lit up at her touch. Somewhere deep down, there was whispering, but it was easy to ignore for now, and so Emma did.

 

The whispering grew louder when she found and was lost to the heady feeling of that thread pulsing between her and Regina, and when it crystallized in front of her, they said  _ pull.  _ Emma took hold of it and did.

 

It brought Regina directly in front of her, eyes dark and intently focused on Emma. 

 

“How did you do that?” she demanded, almost able to pull off indignance if she hadn’t been so clearly affected. “I was shielding my presence. I could give you finding me once or twice out of the sheer dumb luck you’ve always  _ annoyingly  _ had in spades, but - “

 

Emma wasn’t listening. Her hand had come up to trace the apple of Regina’s cheek completely without her permission, answering some craving in her soul for connection. Regina cut herself off at her touch, starting at her questioningly. The thread between them still glowed bright between the fingers of her other hand, and Emma suspected it would be almost blinding in intensity if she could bring herself to look anywhere but Regina’s face. 

 

If she’d had the shears on her, it would be so easy to cut it right here, right now. This Regina would never know the difference. Emma would stop feeling the urge to confess everything and lay bare her terror at this connection she didn’t understand, because it wouldn’t matter anymore. Her visions would stop. Everything would stop. 

 

Regina’s eyes were wide and intense and very, very close. 

 

“Something’s wrong,” Regina whispered. “Emma?”

 

Emma could feel her breath on her mouth, their magic recognizing each other and twining in her veins, the connection between them thrumming like a living thing in Emma’s hand. 

 

_ Cut it!  _ the voices screamed.  _ Get the shears and cut it! _

 

Everything would stop - including this. 

 

_ Main Street, a sword in her hands, a cloud of darkness starting to wrap itself around her arm, Regina screaming -  _

 

Emma stepped back with a gasp and took a deep breath, letting the rush of cold air shock her lungs and trying to ignore the disappointment that washed over Regina’s face. 

 

That had been new. Emma looked down at her arm to see if the darkness wasn’t still wrapping around it. It was bare except for the sleeve of her sweater, but she could swear she still felt it crawling its way up toward her shoulder, neck, heart. 

 

“Emma?” Regina whispered again, and Emma shook herself.

 

“I’ve, uh, got to go,” she said, her voice rough and cracking. “I’ll catch you later?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Regina took a deep breath of her own, exhaling heavily and leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree. 

 

While she wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, she’d be lying to say she hadn’t hoped to push Emma into a reaction like that. Regina just had her doubts that she’d actually had a hand in any of it. 

 

Well, besides the obvious. 

 

But as if to prove just how very off her game she was, she jumped and was perilously close to  _ yelping  _ in surprise when there was a rustling behind her that was too big to have been caused by an animal. She looked around the trunk of the tree, readying her magic just in case. 

 

Adding another level of humiliation when Killian Jones stood there with a thunderous expression on his face. 

 

It wasn’t the first time she’d faced down an angry pirate, and it was unlikely to be the last. Regina smoothed down her rumpled clothes, trying to do something for her image. There wasn’t much she could do for her torn pantyhose, but then, let him think what he wanted to about those. 

 

“Captain,” she greeted him, stepping forward. “Is there something I can do for you in the middle of the woods, as we are?”

 

“Don’t play with me, your bloody majesty,” he snarled at her. Well. It was going to be like that, and she let the smirk she was keeping in check overtake her face just to antagonize him, delighted when it worked. “You’ve always had a hold on her, and I’ve respected that, but it’s gone beyond that now. You’re  _ controlling  _ her!”

 

Regina could still feel the ghost of that pull drawing her to Emma moments ago, uncompromising and almost more seductive than even the darkest magic she’d ever used, and she nearly laughed in his face. Did he honestly think  _ she’d _ been controlling that? 

 

He still had yet to say what exactly it was he’d seen, however, and she was content to draw it out of him before really playing with him. “Oh come now. That’s quite an accusation,” she said, almost disapproving. 

 

He really wasn’t holding back on the sneering, and she supposed she couldn’t blame him. But his next words did surprise her: “Your better half has already shared her suspicions. I’ve just had all the proof I need.”

 

“Really,” she murmured, and decided to address the first point. “You know which one I am, then?”

 

“Of course,” he said brusquely, waving a hand at her like he could swat her away. “I don’t know how you’ve got the rest of this town fooled that there’s even any question.”

 

“Interesting,” she said, drawing closer to him. “And you say my lesser half believes that I’m controlling Emma?”

 

He seemed then to realize that he’d given something away, and his face darkened further in anger, presumably self-directed this time. “I’m saying,” he said, taking a step of his own, “that it doesn’t matter what Regina thinks.”

 

“Considering that you’re here with me, continuing a battle you’ve only been winning because a weak Regina gave up, I’d say it matters quite a lot what Regina thinks,” she countered. “To both of us. Harder to fight a war on two fronts, isn’t it?”

 

“And is that your game?” he demanded. “Emma?”

 

“Emma has been my game longer that you’ve known she existed,” Regina said. “I admit, she’s not my only game, but she is playing very willingly, and is quite conscious of what she’s doing.”

 

He stared at her for a long moment, and she held his gaze, curious to see what he would come back at her with. 

 

“I think,” he said at length, “that you’re only interested in playing this game again because your recent romantic endeavor failed so spectacularly.”

 

“How dare you,” she snarled, feeling the omnipresent urge to rip out his throat start to surface again from where she’d long pushed it into dormancy.. 

 

“I think that you never  _ really  _ laid claim to Emma because you knew it would upset a great many people,” he said. “Not like a very conventional - very bland - honorable thief would have.”

 

“I never ‘laid claim’ to Emma because Emma’s is no one’s to claim,” she said, narrowing her eyes, fingers itching with an intense need to act.

 

He didn’t pay her any attention, though, and continued. “Your mommy dearest killed your first boyfriend, as I recall. I wonder just how similar your dear Robin Hood was to him - and just of that was your trying to reclaim something you will  _ never  _ get back?”

 

The rage was sudden and blinding, and the rush of power was a thick pleasure coursing through her veins and making her lightheaded with the delight of it. Her hands were around his throat before she was aware of having put them there as she tackled him to the ground and straddled his chest. His body futilely tried to buck all the magical force of her off of him, but cooly, she balanced herself and remained right where she was. Some fear had finally started to enter his eyes, and Regina cackled to see it. 

 

“Do you know that your vocal cords are right under my fingers,” she said, leaning down close, plucking at them one by one through the tender skin at his throat. “I wonder what kind of damage I could do even without magic? I wonder if you’d like to find out. I know I’ve spent long enough wondering.”

 

He sputtered and coughed as much as he was able against the magically-aided vise of her fingers. Lazily, she let one hand drift down until it rested over the skin of his chest, and patted it.

 

“See, you’d thought I was gone,” she explained to him as if he were a very simple second grader. “That was your first mistake. Of course I want Emma.  _ Emma  _ knows I want Emma. There is not a version of me that doesn’t want Emma, and that’s not news to anyone who’s been paying attention. What’s news to you, apparently, is that I am willing to do what it takes to get her. With her consent, obviously,” she added, patting his cheek. “That’s important.”

 

He looked like he was about to protest that it hadn’t bothered her much in her past, but she cut him off by plunging her hand into his chest and extracting his heart. He choked when she held it up in front of him, a mess of swirling red and black the same as hers, before her other half had crushed it in front of her. Her fingers tightened around both heart and throat, and it was impossible to tell which he was reacting to when he whimpered. 

 

“You think you have a hope of understanding someone like her?” she asked, cooing. “That’s sweet. You were the Dark One alongside her, so you’d think you might, but all you proved is how much you don’t understand her. Do you feel the darkness in her veins, even now, struggling for balance with the part of her that will always be the Savior? I feel that every second I’m with her. I always have.  _ And she knows it.  _ Why do you think she came to me before? Why do you think she can’t stop coming to me even now?”

 

His red face was starting to go purple. She wasn’t entirely sure he could even understand her anymore. 

 

“I wish you’d never come back from the Underworld,” she said. “You and I both know that’s where you should be right now, instead of ruining everything you touch up here. But then again, that’s not news to you, hmm?”

 

He looked like he was going to start pleading for his last breath. She ran her fingers delicately over the bands of his throat again, imagining what they would look like exposed and in her hands, threads between her fingers. 

 

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you - today,” she told him. “That would run counter to what I’m trying to do. But I think I will leave you here. Give you some time to think about things. What do you think?”

 

He was already out cold. She drew herself up, his heart still in her hand, and considered. It would be terribly easy to crush it; easier still to keep it with her and control him. Emma would never have to know. 

 

But still - Emma would never forgive her if she ever did. 

 

Reluctantly, she pressed her fingers to Hook’s temples, exerting just enough of her will that he’d be out for a few days, enough time to give Emma space she hadn’t had in far too long, and thrust his heart back into his chest with a little more force than was actually necessary. His body jerked with it, and then lay still. 

 

Distastefully, she climbed off of him, discreetly pulling down her pencil skirt from where it had rucked up around her thighs. She laughed at what she must look like to someone walking in.

 

“For the second time in an hour, Regina,” she muttered to herself, and patted Hook on the cheek. “Not bad.”

 

She was briefly sorry she hadn’t used the opportunity to get any details about Emma’s visions out of him, but one tantalizing revelation was almost more than enough. So her other half thought she was controlling Emma? She could make an educated guess that that had to do with those visions - whether she believed Regina was implanting or influencing them was almost beside the point. 

 

So, she’d been cast as the enemy of Emma’s visions. No wonder Emma was being so tightlipped about the whole thing. By whom was the actual question at hand, considering that Regina hadn’t had any part in Emma’s visions; and Regina was briefly paralyzed by the thought that the visions were real, true things. Manifestations of those bitches, the Fates, like the rare, inescapable prophecy.

 

Regina had had quite enough of prophecy and fate in her life. She’d be damned if she ended up fighting Emma after everything. Lip curling again as she nudged Hook with her foot, she refreshed her clothes with her magic and strode out of the woods and back into the afternoon light. 

 

A thought struck her as she did - Emma deflecting her magic, grinning unconsciously as she hurtled some of her own back. 

 

Odd, that Emma would still spar with her, if Regina was right about this. Perhaps she wasn’t the enemy. Or perhaps Emma thought she could change it. 

 

Regina stared up at the brilliant sun, and wished her luck. 


	5. Chapter 5

Aladdin tracked her down at the station the following day to return the shears, and Emma honestly couldn’t say whether she was more relieved or afraid to be able to put them back in her pocket, especially after... whatever that had been… with Regina in the forest.

 

“You haven’t come to reclaim them, but going off your reaction to - well, you know - I thought it might just be nerves,” Aladdin explained. 

 

The truth was that it was part nerves and part distraction. She had Hook had been fighting for a while since the whole visions thing had been forced into the open, and now that he’d been missing for two days without any word to Emma, she was starting to wonder if it was more than his typical moody response to whatever specific thing she’d done to upset him. 

 

Snow and David had certainly been alarmed. She’d tried explaining that this wasn’t a big deal, he’d done this before, but that hadn’t really gone over well. 

 

“He could be hurt out there, Emma,” David had said. “Don’t you owe it to him to at least start a search party?” 

 

Frankly, Emma thought Hook would like that too much - her putting aside every other legitimate thing she was worried about to focus on him - and only shrugged. 

 

“He’s fine,” she’d said. “He’ll be back in another day or so.”

 

They’d apparently gone to Regina, who had reacted badly - as expected - and come straight to Emma’s office. 

 

“Why do your parents think I did anything to Hook?” Regina had demanded, storming into the room. 

 

“I don’t know. Why do you care?” Emma asked, looking up suspiciously from her paperwork. 

 

Regina looked her over intently. “Why don’t you?” she asked. 

 

“Because he’s fine. He does this. He’ll be back tonight, I’m a hundred percent sure,” Emma said, and hoped she was right and wishing she’d lied when David had asked her where Hook was yesterday.

 

“Emma,” Regina said, her face growing pinched. “With everything that’s going on, don’t you think it’s a good idea to at least rule out that something…  _ unfortunate…  _ happened to him?”

 

“You mean, rule out that the Evil Queen didn’t kill him or something,” Emma translated. “Regina, I think you’re really overthinking this.”

 

“I’ve just never heard you mention Hook doing this before,” Regina said.

 

“You think I’m lying?” 

 

“No,” Regina denied. “Of course not. I’m just concerned about the effect it would have on you if you discovered that your boyfriend, who you went to hell for, had accidentally drowned or something and you missed it.”

 

“I’m not missing anything,” Emma said. “Trust me, of all the problems I’ve got right now, this is the most mundane.”

 

Regina scrutinized her again. “Maybe you should consider why you think that is,” she said. 

 

Regina had left, radiating concern, and Emma had taken the first chance to leave as soon as David showed up to relieve her shift. She was half expecting to be ambushed by Regina - Evil Queen edition - on the walk home, since that would be the absolute icing on this cake of a day, and caught herself jumping at the evening shadows roughly every two minutes. Maybe if she did ambush Emma, she could at least do her duty and ask her about Hook. It would be a good distraction from the way Emma couldn’t stop remembering what it was like to hold the connection between them between her fingers, or worse, what it was like to kiss her, and how that knowledge was fucking up every other relationship in her life.

 

Emma caught movement out of the corner of her eye and tensed, ready for action. A stray cat skittered lightly across her path and she groaned out loud, turning around and running straight into Archie.

 

“Hello, Emma,” he’d greeted her mildly. Pongo, recognizing her, started trying to jump up on her, and Emma had dropped down to pet him and accept his enthusiastic licks. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

 

“I guess,” she’d muttered, and somehow that was the thing that brought her straight to the edge of bursting into tears. 

 

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. How is everything?” he’d gone on as if he hadn’t noticed. 

 

She must have looked worse than she thought. It hadn’t taken much for him to cajole her into requesting another appointment, and then for him to escort her straight back to his office. 

 

“Emergency service, huh. You gonna charge me double for this?” Emma joked wearily. 

 

“I happen to be free now,” Archie told her, letting her walk into his office ahead of him. “You’re doing me a favor by taking an empty slot.”

 

Given that it was the end of the day, Emma strongly suspected that it hadn’t been a slot in the first place, but she didn’t argue. 

 

The truth was that Emma was tired. She was tired of not feeling like herself, she was tired of trying to keep everything together, she was tired of managing everyone else’s emotions about this whole prophecy or vision or  _ whatever  _ business while dealing with her own impending death and the responsibility of not just her own fate, but Regina’s. 

 

“So…. the last time you were here, you were concerned about your visions,” Archie said, sitting down as Emma started pacing. “Are they still a concern to you?”

 

Emma huffed a laugh. “Uh, yeah. I’d say so.”

 

“In what way?”

 

Archie’s voice was patient as ever, and Emma reminded herself that she was here of her own volition. “It’s like they’re more than what they were, now, it’s…” Emma stopped, aware of the tension in her clenched fists only peripherally. “I’m seeing more.”

 

“More?” Archie asked. “Can you elaborate?”

 

“It’s not like it’s part of the vision anymore. It’s more like a memory.” Emma walked a few steps, putting a hand to her forehead - sword, dagger, darkness - and another to her left side in anticipation of the pain. 

 

“Do you know that the memory is?” 

 

“Yeah,” Emma said, but couldn’t continue. The words felt like they were stuck in her chest along with the darkness, stuffing itself down, down, down as it bore her up, dagger in hand. 

 

“Emma?” Archie’s voice broke in, and she startled back to herself. “You’re safe here, whatever it is that has a hold on you.”

 

“I know,” she choked out. 

 

“Take your time,” Archie said, soothingly, and she kept her eyes trained out the window. One, three, six, seven cars passed by. Two landscapers worked in the park down the street. Six people she knew passed on the sidewalk below. The day was bright and cheery, cold with winter and the impending holiday season, garish decorations starting to go up in the storefronts along Main Street. It was nothing like that night at all, which helped. Even as her brain tried to pick out where exactly it was that she’d stood, picking out landmarks in her memory, all she could remember was Regina’s terrified eyes and the huddled forms of her parents and Hook and Robin in the near distance.

 

That also helped, enough that she slowly brought herself to draw away from the window and return to face Archie. 

 

“It’s from two years ago, when I became the Dark One,” she told him. “The moment it happened, actually.”

 

“Ah,” Archie said. “You haven’t talked much about your experience as the Dark One with me, but I feel it’s safe to assume that it was traumatic for you.”

 

Emma snorted. “That’s one way to describe it.”

 

“It’s not unusual for the brain to connect two moments of trauma together unconsciously,” Archie said. “This is somewhat out of the ordinary since it’s something more like the anticipation of trauma, but the point stands.”

 

“Even if they’re unrelated?” Emma asked.

 

Archie hesitated. “Well, yes,” he said, regarding her thoughtfully. “But let me ask you: are you sure they’re unrelated?”

 

“What do you mean by that?” 

 

“Just that,” Archie assured her, unfazed by her defensiveness. “Is there anything that immediately comes to mind that the two things have in common?” Emma must have been thinking about it too long, because he continued almost immediately with, “No, no. Okay. Let’s try this. When you’ve had the visions lately, where does it start to shift into your memories?”

 

“I don’t know,” Emma says, lying to give herself time to stall. “I guess - I’m fighting the cloaked person, right, and suddenly the darkness starts swirling around me, and I’m not holding a sword anymore, I’m holding that fucking dagger.”

 

“And what are you seeing?”

 

“Regina,” Emma said, without thinking. 

 

Archie looked surprised enough that Emma felt chagrined by her immediate answer. Archie noticed, and tried to allay her unease. “No, that’s good, Emma,” he assured her. “So Regina’s in front of you. What’s happening?”

 

“It’s like it was then,” Emma said. “She’s terrified. I’m terrified. I usually snap out of it before… before the thing actually happens.”

 

Archie absorbed this quietly for a moment, clearly wanting more details as much as Emma didn’t want to give them. She could feel the moment closing around her, though, and knowing she couldn’t avoid this anymore, she quietly groaned. 

 

“Look, just ask the question,” she said. “I’ll do my best, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Archie said, smiling encouragingly. “Stop me if it’s too much.” 

 

“Deal.”

 

“What made you decide in that moment to become the Dark One?” 

 

Emma swallowed, felt the panic well up inside her. Regina being swallowed alive by the darkness, a blank dagger in Emma’s hand. 

 

“It went for Regina,” she said. “The darkness. I had the dagger. It was the only thing I could do to stop it.”

 

“Surely Regina would have understood if you hadn’t. She’s handled the darkness before.”

 

“Yeah, and look how well that worked out,” Emma pointed out. “There’s an Evil Queen on the loose right now that will tell you.”

 

“Ignoring that comment for the moment,” Archie said pointedly, “that doesn’t answer the question. 

 

It didn’t, but Emma didn’t have an answer. At least, not one that didn’t involve her stumbling over things she barely understood right now, and definitely hadn’t understood then. 

 

Archie seemed to understand, and moved on in the wake of Emma’s silence. “You’ve said before that you know that you group Regina in with your parents and Henry when using the words “my family”,” Archie said. “You share the responsibility of a child, which a very intimate thing. It’s not a surprising thing, and certainly not a bad thing, that you love her independently of Henry.”

 

Okay, maybe he understood a little better than she’d thought.

 

“And if for no other reason that love is a big thing,” Archie continued, “it’s also not surprising that your mind would fixate on such a huge moment for the both of you that was too traumatic for you to look at too closely.”

 

It was easier to deal with that, so Emma felt absolved of not touching anything that came before it. “It wasn’t that moment that was traumatic. I mean, not exactly,” she said. “It was everything that came after.”

 

“That makes sense,” Archie said. “The Dark One is a powerful force.”

 

She wasn’t sure if he was gracefully sidestepping her - and briefly Killian’s - tenure as the Dark One, or if he was genuinely just making a general statement. “It… I mean,  _ yeah _ ,” she agreed, feeling the remnant of it pulse inside her even as she spoke. “But it was more… it changed me. And I don’t think I ever completely changed back.”

 

“Oh,” Archie said, wide-eyed. 

 

“Yeah,” Emma said again. “And I don’t know… I don’t like it. I feel like sometimes, some people are so happy about it. Can’t even tell the difference. Which - really fucking hurts. And others - they can tell, but they won’t  _ say  _ anything.”

 

“Maybe they’re waiting for you to say something,” Archie pointed out. “Maybe they think you’re happy.”

 

“Do I  _ look  _ happy?” Emma asked, but immediately thought better of it and buried her face in her hands. “Don’t answer that.”

 

“I think the fact that you’ve come to see me voluntarily five times in the past month tells anyone who’s paying attention that you’re not happy,” Archie said. “I also think you may not be giving these people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they can tell, but know you’ve been through a lot, that you may have changed, and that this is simply you, and this is their attempt to respect it. I honestly can’t answer for them. But I think the better question is - what are  _ you  _ doing about your own happiness?”

 

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

“And that’s a good first step,” Archie agreed. “Emma, the first time you came in, you told me that you felt insecure in your relationship with Hook because you saw him holding a child, and it made you feel that you owed him something. A family.”

 

Vaguely, Emma thought words were being put in her mouth, but she felt the truth of it in her core. “Yeah. And?”

 

“‘Owing’ isn’t exactly the same as being happy. Do you want more children?”

 

She shrugged, uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

 

“Okay, that’s fine, no need to pry into that now. But can I ask, did you think about having more children before you became the Dark One?”

 

“No,” she answered. “I was happy with the way things were.”

 

“You were happy with the way things were,” Archie repeated. “And how was that, exactly?”

 

“I was with Hook. Things were just starting between us. Me and my parents had a good thing going with boundaries. Things were finally good between me and Regina. Henry was happy.” Again, she shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know. It was just good.”

 

“And how are things now?” Anticipating her response, he added, “Forget about the visions. In terms of your relationships now, how is your life? And does it make you happy?”

 

She thought again about Hook holding Ella’s baby, and felt the familiar wave of cold panic creep through her, but least  _ that  _ was better than the anger constantly threatening to boil over all the time when he did something that called out to it. She tried to think of the last time she’d had a conversation with Regina, felt the warmth of her smile, and couldn’t. She thought of Henry’s silence, and her parents’ beaming approval of her life, and closed her eyes. 

 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

 

“Okay,” Archie said again, infuriatingly agreeable. “Let’s go back then, if you’re okay with that. You said that the moment you became the Dark One was less traumatic for you than actually being the Dark One, if you don’t mind my paraphrasing. But that doesn’t mean that you should discount the trauma of that moment - especially when your mind is giving you very big signals right now that you shouldn’t.”

 

“Was there a question in there?”

 

Archie cleared his throat. Emma smiled faintly. 

 

“Did you know it was going to be bad?” Archie asked. 

 

“I had an idea, yeah,” Emma answered wryly.

 

“Then why do it?”

 

“Regina,” Emma said. “We’ve been over this.”

 

“But what specifically was the impulse?” Archie pressed. “Do me a favor: close your eyes, and imagine it.”

 

“I’d really rather not,” Emma said, but was already shifting around as if she couldn’t already feel the created wind, the whip-like ribbons of the darkness swirling in front of her, around her, in her soul where she’d never managed to completely dislodge it. There was the terror, more immediate than the echoes of the anger that had come after it; and somehow, it was always worse.

 

“You’ll be perfectly safe, I promise,” Archie said, adding, “and so will I. I trust you.”

 

Reluctantly, she closed her eyes, and when nothing immediately happened, she sighed in relief. 

 

“Good,” Archie’s voice said. “Now - only think about that night. You have the dagger in your hand. Regina is in front of you. The darkness is taking her. What are you feeling?”

 

“Afraid,” she said. 

 

“Why?” Archie pressed.

 

“She’s going to become the Dark One if I don’t do something.”

 

“And why is that a bad thing?”

 

“Because she doesn’t deserve it,” Emma said. “Not again, when she doesn’t have a choice.” 

 

Before her, Regina was paralyzed and immobile, horrorstruck with the fact of what was happening to her. She’d just been on a walk with her boyfriend. She’d just been having dinner with her family. She’d just saved them all without a single one of her memories and had been wearing the glow of a hero like a cloak, and Emma had been basking in the glow of her total transformation from the heartless mayor she’d first met. 

 

“Are you afraid for yourself?” Archie’s voice broke through. In her mind, Regina shouted,  _ Emma, no!  _ Her eyes were wide and terrified, and beneath the hero, Emma could only see a friend who loved her. 

 

“I’m afraid for her,” Emma said. “She’s so afraid.”

 

“And you don’t want her to be afraid,” Archie’s voice soothed. “You want her to be...”

 

“ _ Happy _ .”

 

The word fell out of Emma’s mouth like a weight, and her eyes snapped open to see Archie looking back at her with surprise written all over his face. It was obvious she’d said something revealing, even it she didn’t know what it was. Of course she wanted Regina to be happy. She was the mother of her son, her best friend, her family. Like Archie said, it wasn’t exactly surprising. 

 

But Archie’s silence persisted uncomfortably, ratcheting Emma’s tension up to an extreme that was actually becoming painful. She was just about ready to spring up and run out the door and probably never come back, when Archie finally settled on something to say.

 

“Emma?” he said quietly, obviously trying not to spook her, and Emma tensed in anticipation. “We’ve established that you love Regina, that much is obvious, but - Emma, are you  _ in love  _ with her?”

 

Emma stared at him, and tried to force herself to laugh, but her body was going into something like shock. Her chest tingled and her face was numb, and all that escaped her mouth was a sound that wasn’t a yes, but wasn’t a no either. 

 

“It’s okay,” Archie said, but the shock was written all over his face too, and that  _ did  _ make Emma laugh. 

 

But in the middle of it, a dam broke that she hadn’t even known existed, and she hunched over herself with the force of her crying instead. In the background, Archie was making little noises of alarm, putting a hand on her knee and leaving it there when she didn’t brush it off. Somewhere in Emma’s mind, a more rational part of her was still laughing hysterically at the awkwardness of what was happening. 

 

Of course she was in love with Regina.  _ Of fucking course.  _

 

It had never been news that she’d been attracted to Regina - Regina herself had known that probably the day they’d met, because she’d used it every opportunity she got, and Emma would be lying if she said some part of her hadn’t enjoyed it. She’d gotten addicted to the pull between them, to the way Regina looked at her with predatory eyes too, and known that if they’d ever acted on it they’d have set the world on fire. 

 

Somewhere along the line that pull had tempered, to the point where Emma looked at Regina and thought only  _ God, she’s beautiful.  _ It hadn’t taken long for that to blossom into  _ God, I love her,  _ warmth and affection blooming in her chest at the sight of one of Regina’s rare and radiant smiles, so different from the razor sharp smirks Emma had thrived on in the first year they’d known each other. Emma had found herself drifting toward her side more and more, never feeling quite right until she could feel the warmth of her body a few inches away, until Regina could reach out if she wanted to and smile at her because she was  _ Emma,  _ because she was her friend, and because she loved her too. 

 

Emma had never known anything like it. Of course she loved Regina. 

 

Of course she was in love with Regina.

 

Eventually, Emma calmed down enough to sit back up and blow her nose and completely avoid Archie’s eyes. 

 

“Well,” he said in a tone that was trying really, really hard to be light. “That might explain a few things about your relationship with Hook.”

 

It was borderline unprofessional, but it made Emma snort unattractively, still clutching a goddamn kleenex. “I guess,” she agreed. “Not sure how up I am for talking about that, either, if I’m being honest.” Two Reginas, both of whom she loved (was  _ in love with _ , holy shit), and a Hook gone AWOL - Emma’s mind was shutting down just at the idea of exploring the boundaries of her current situation any further.

 

“Understandable,” Archie said, looking almost relieved to not have to broach a topic he was completely unprepared for. “I would be remiss if I didn’t try to at least bring it back around to your visions, and the matter of them changing, as you put it.” At Emma’s nod to go ahead, he continued. “I think you can figure out what the common denominator is between them, and why your brain is anxious to avoid trauma like that again.”

 

Emma rubbed at her swollen eyes, appreciative of the way he was talking around the subject anyway. “Do you think it’s all in my head?” she asked. 

 

Archie hesitated. “If I were a normal counselor, I’d say yes. But given that this town literally runs on magic - “

 

“Anything’s possible,” Emma finished dully. “So we’re back to square one. Only I feel a hell of a lot worse than I did the first time around.”

 

“Feeling a lot worse is unfortunately the first step to healing,” Archie said, offering a smile when she glared at him. “So just as a friend - any ideas about what you’re going to do?”

 

Emma sighed and weighed her options. “Yeah. Maybe you can help me with an unbiased opinion.” 

 

The shears were a comforting weight that never left her pocket at this point, and Archie’s eyebrows went rocketing ceiling-ward when Emma put them on the table between them, and reached their full stretch potential by the time Emma had briefly explained what they were used for. He was also giving them a look of healthy respect and fear, and catching it, Emma thought maybe she should do better than carrying a magical item that the actual Greek gods had once used to shape human existence around in her front pocket all day long.

 

“Are you planning on using them?” Archie asked, and only because it was the thirty thousandth time Emma had heard the question, she bristled.

 

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she asked.

 

“Because they love you, and they’re concerned you might take one action or the other and regret the consequences,” Archie said.

 

“I know, I know,” Emma said, groaning. She could only imagine the concern if anyone actually knew the power she felt holding them - how it surged through her veins and made her unstoppable - how much she  _ liked  _ it - 

 

Too much, Emma reminded herself, and forced herself back.

 

“I just feel like…. I feel like I can’t make my own choices anymore. You know?” she said. “I can’t even remember the last time I made a choice more important than what I had for lunch without at least five people telling me what I should do, and this matters so much.”

 

“It sounds right now like you’re leaning toward using the shears,” Archie observed.

 

“Shouldn’t I be?” Emma asked, not even able to care about how defensive her voice was coming out. “Don’t I deserve my own life? Killian said that I was unhappy being the Savior, and I mean - he wasn’t  _ wrong.  _ I never asked for any of this. My parents just put me in a tree after they heard a prophecy and that was it. I made my own choices in life because I had to, because I didn’t have any help. I definitely didn’t have any magic. And then suddenly I get everything I ever wanted but the trade off is I have to accept being this person, and nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be this person.”

 

“The Savior,” Archie clarified.

 

“Right.”

 

“So what is it that makes Emma Swan different from the Savior?” Archie asked. 

 

Emma clenched her fists. “I don’t know. I feel like I  _ have  _ to be the Savior. I’m always Emma Swan. That’s not even exactly it, I just… I don’t know. I feel like Emma Swan lately is like -  like this blank piece of paper. Or like a blank piece of paper is all  _ I  _ can see, but everyone else can see something written on it and I only know what they tell me.” 

 

“So the stakes as you see them are - be your own person, or let others make you into the person that they want you to be,” Archie said. 

 

“The stakes for what? For using the shears?”

 

“No, for your life,” Archie said. “Like I said, I’m not qualified to help you with your visions in terms of how real they are and how you can change them. I’m not qualified to make a judgment call on the consequences of using those shears, either.”

 

“I guess you’re going to tell me that it doesn’t matter if I use the shears or not?” Emma said, scoffing. 

 

“It does matter,” Archie corrected. “But it matters like every other life decision. You’re at a crisis point. I’m here to help you make sure that you walk into that crisis with your eyes wide open about who you are and what you want.”

 

“I just…” Emma said, restlessly rolling her neck to release the tension there. “I feel like I don’t even recognize myself lately. Like there are these two versions of me, and somehow I ended up as the wrong one.”

 

“You want to take control of your life,” Archie said. “You feel that by making a choice like this, to use the shears, that you’ll be closer to that version of you that you recognize again.”

 

“Yeah,” Emma admitted. “I guess that’s a bad reason to use them, huh?”

 

“Not necessarily,” Archie said. “Only you can make that call. But I would advise you to sleep on it at least once before making any decisions. Talk to your family. Talk to Regina. Make sure you have all the facts. And be honest with yourself about what you want, and why you’re doing this.”

 

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Emma said, and as soon as she heard her words - about the same time that Archie looked at her empathetically - she wanted to take them back. 

 

“What you want matters very much,” Archie countered. “It’s time you started believing that.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It wasn’t hard for Regina to find the Evil Queen - but then, she hadn’t made it hard, either. 

 

“I wondered when you’d crawl your way over here,” her voice called as Regina descended the steps into her vault. “You held out longer than I thought you would.”

 

“Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?” Regina asked, coming face to face with a woman who by all appearances was her own self. 

 

The Evil Queen smirked. “Why not both? Come now, Regina, you know we’ve always had a love-hate relationship. Why spoil the fun now?”

 

“Because you’re coming after the people I care about,” Regina said. 

 

“Oh, claws out already, I see,” tutted the Evil Queen, eyes wide in mock innocence. “What is the good and pure Regina going to do about it?”

 

“You’re admitting that you are behind Hook’s disappearance, then?” Regina asked evenly.

 

“Hook? That old fleabag?” the Evil Queen said, scoffing. “Has he finally run away with his tail between his legs?” 

 

“You tell me. Emma hasn’t heard from him in over a day.”

 

The Evil Queen circled nearer, regarding her almost curiously. “Did you really come down here to accuse me of disappearing Hook? A man both of us hate?” 

 

“Emma loves him,” Regina said, as if it were answer enough. 

 

The Evil Queen cast her a pitying glance. “Emma doesn’t know what she loves. She’s as confused in that regard as you are, my dear.”

 

“That’s not an answer.”

 

“Hmm?” said the Evil Queen, expression blank. “I suppose it isn’t.”

 

“I’m not here for your games,” Regina thundered, stepping closer, only for the Evil Queen to laugh in her face.

 

“Do you know, our dear Snow told me the same thing,” she said. “So did Emma, come to think of it. Said that they knew all of our games, and, well.  _ Snow,  _ certainly. But Emma?” She tutted again. 

 

“Leave her alone,” Regina said. 

 

“Or what?” asked the Evil Queen. “Oh, I see. You’re still under the impression that I’m out to  _ harm  _ your precious beloveds. Rest easy, Regina - I’m not. Oh, don’t look so confused. You poor dear, you must have been torturing yourself with the question. And you couldn’t even muster up the gumption to come down and ask me about it until now, using  _ Hook  _ as an excuse,” she crooned, patting Regina’s cheek. More furious than she’d been in weeks, Regina jerked away, relishing the familiar rush of blood in her veins despite everything. 

 

“You literally just refused to deny that you were going after them, including Hook,” Regina said. “Or is your memory going?”

 

“I didn’t deny it, it’s true,” the Evil Queen agreed. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t go after the pirate.”

 

“You expect me to believe he just wandered off?” Regina demanded. 

 

“Why not? What does Emma believe?” the Evil Queen asked, watching her closely, and when Regina didn’t respond, she laughed. “There’s more than one thing to go after in people, Regina, and I’m surprised that of the two of us, you’re the one who’s jumping to pain and torture.” She tilted her head. “Or - perhaps it’s not so surprising after all. After all, I am you. I  _ came  _ from you.”

 

“You might have come from me,” Regina said, “but you are  _ not  _ me.”

 

“Not anymore,” the Evil Queen agreed cheerfully. “But I do wonder - just how often are you finding yourself saying that?” 

 

“Enough of the mind games,” Regina said, and the Evil Queen smirked again.

 

“Interesting that they’re working on you,” she said, stalking in a circle around Regina, who opened up her mouth again to protest. The Evil Queen leaned in close to her ear before she could even take a breath. “But you know me, Regina - I won’t stop unless you  _ make me _ .”

 

In response, Regina let loose a wave of magic that threw her back a few feet, at least - enough space for Regina to be able to breathe again and try to compose herself, hating with everything in her how rattled the Evil Queen actually had the power to make her. 

 

“Nice,” said the Evil Queen, “although not the way of stopping me I would have expected from you. Although,” she added thoughtfully, “I suppose that’s the point.”

 

Regina was smart enough to keep her mouth shut about  _ that _ this time, despite the fury straining to gather and take form, to break free. She wondered just how much of a weak kitten she actually appeared compared to this mirror image of her, and if Emma could see them side by side like this, she might actually pity her for once instead of this creature she’d brought forth into the world who  _ wouldn’t stop preying on her strength _ . 

 

“You’ve spent so long trying to convince everybody else that I was gone that you managed to convince yourself,” the Evil Queen said, starting to circle her again. “Regina, so good, so…  _ reformed. _ You built us a family around it, and that’s when you started being terrified of me.”

 

“I was never terrified of you,” Regina denied. 

 

“Oh no?” asked the Evil Queen, and parroted in a high voice, “ _ Emma, I wanted to tear out his throat.  _ Did you like the way she looked at you then? Did you like the way she was afraid of you? It had been so long since she’d looked at us that way.” 

 

Regina remembered it - remembered feeling exhausted and ready to scratch herself out of her skin, and that maybe, just maybe, an Emma so fresh from her own terror with the Dark One, and who already knew all her other secrets, would understand. 

 

She’d watched Robin die in front of her two days before, Daniel’s ageless face superimposed over the memory every time she closed her eyes until seventeen year old Regina twined mercilessly around her in a sparking, howling fit of grief and rage. It would have been so easy to descend into it again, but there had been Emma, just one room away, who had taken on the darkness, precisely so that Regina wouldn’t have to. 

 

A mistake, as it had turned out. A mistake in so many ways. 

 

“Did you like it?” Regina asked quietly. 

 

“We aren’t talking about me,” said the Evil Queen with a sharp smile. “We’re talking about you. You were so afraid that they’d find out about me one day and leave you in the dust, and what do you go and do? You  _ tell  _ them about me?” She laughed. “I suppose I shouldn’t complain. It got me free of you.”

 

“Was being part of me such a trial?” Regina asked. 

 

“Oh,  _ absolutely _ ,” the Evil Queen said with conviction. “I’d turn the question around, but then again, I’m walking, corporeal proof of your answer.” 

 

“I liked having you where I could keep an eye on you,” Regina muttered, and it prompted the Evil Queen to snarl. 

 

“You like me where you could control me,” she said. 

 

Regina laughed disbelievingly. “Yes,” she said. “You need to be controlled. Clearly.”

 

“And just what am I doing that so  _ clearly  _ requires me to be under your control?” the Evil Queen asked. “Spending time with my family? Spending time with  _ Emma _ ?” 

 

Regina didn’t rise to the very obvious bait - really, had she always been so obvious? - and listed dryly, “Masquerading as me, stealing my identity…”

 

“But is it really your identity to steal?” asked the Evil Queen, finger raised. 

 

“Is that what this is about? Which one of us gets to be me?” Regina asked, disbelieving. “You don’t want world domination or the blood of innocents, you want to be  _ me _ ?” 

 

“No,” said the Evil Queen. “I want to be  _ me _ .”

 

“Well, have at it,” Regina said, waving at her dismissively. “I think I’ve made it clear I want nothing to do with that.”

 

The Evil Queen surveyed her, eyes narrowed. “Oh, don’t worry Regina - that you have. Fortunately for me, our family has been more… accepting.”

 

“ _ Accepting _ ?” Regina demanded. “Just what the hell does that mean?” 

 

“So many questions,” the Evil Queen tutted. “I think I’ve given you more answers than are really fair here, wouldn’t you agree?” 

 

“Please,” Regina scoffed. “You  _ live  _ for this. I’ve been you. Don’t you pretend for a minute that you’re not reveling in drawing this out as painfully as possible.”

 

“Painfully as possible for  _ you _ ,” the Evil Queen said with a smile. “But that’s the name of the game, isn’t it, Regina?” 

 

“Is that supposed to scare me? I figured out a long time ago that you wanted me in pain,” Regina said. 

 

“Is that what you think,” was the response. “Well, I suppose you never really knew yourself very well at all. Then again, I’m a walking reminder of  _ that _ , too.”

 

“Stop making yourself out to be… I don’t know, my personal albatross, or something,” Regina said, biting out the words. 

 

“Then stop dehumanizing me,” said the Evil Queen. “Oh wait - since that’s not going to happen, no deal.”

  
“What are you doing to my family?” Regina asked again, voice rising with her frustration. 

 

“Nothing they’re not okay with,” said the Evil Queen. 

 

“They think it’s  _ me _ ,” said Regina. “There’s a matter of consent, there’s - “

 

But the Evil Queen was laughing again. “So predictable. This isn’t about our family at all. It certainly isn’t about Hook. It’s about  _ Emma _ .”

 

“You knew that the moment I walked in here,” Regina said, trying not to let the Evil Queen’s assessment of the situation throw her, knowing she couldn’t deny for much longer. 

 

“I did,” the Evil Queen agreed, tilting her head, eyes glinting. “I didn’t think you’d actually have even that much figured out though. I’m impressed. Tell me - is this where you finally tell me about Emma’s visions?” 

 

Regina cocked her head, stepped forward. “You know what I find interesting?” she asked. “Is that  _ you’re  _ the one who keeps bringing up Emma - not me.”

 

“We have a common interest in her, of course,” the Evil Queen admitted. “Surely you knew yourself well enough to realize that it wasn’t just your  _ goodness  _ that was interested in her.”

 

And  _ of course _ Regina had known that. That was precisely what terrified her about the Evil Queen’s existence outside of her control, Snow’s  _ insipid  _ linking of that prophecy to Emma’s visions, and Emma’s apparently reciprocal fascination with the Evil Queen. 

 

The Evil Queen could see that she knew it, too - of that, she was certain. Her face broke with practiced laziness into a grin. “And that’s why you’re here,” she said. 

 

“We’ve established that,” Regina said dryly, trying to keep her damn racing heart under control.  _ Focus,  _ she scolded herself. 

 

“Yes, yes.” The Evil Queen waved an impatient hand. “But this is specifically about Emma’s visions, which I would call progress.” Her facade seemed to drop for just a moment, long enough for her to survey Regina with an oddly honest exhaustion. “I would ask you what you’re so afraid of in me, but I know the answer.” 

 

_ Yes, we’ve again established why I’m here,  _ Regina was tempted to snap, but her instincts felt the moment too fragile for it and kept her mouth shut for her.

 

“I wish you would trust me,” the Evil Queen said. “You know you would never hurt Emma. You know  _ I  _ would never hurt Emma. And someone -  _ someone  _ has got to protect Emma from whatever this is, because you know as well as I do that Emma isn’t in a state to protect herself right now.”

 

Regina stared at her, trying to figure out if she knew about the shears, or if that was just a comment about the way Emma had been sapped of life since her experience as the Dark One. It was tempting. She herself might have been wracking her brains and her resources for answers as to what Emma’s visions were for the last few weeks, but she’d been keenly aware the whole time that she’d been doing it as the lesser half of what had once been a single magical entity. 

 

“I won’t betray Emma’s trust,” Regina said reluctantly, and the Evil Queen’s gaze shuttered again. “Just do me a favor? Don’t fight her. No matter what else is going on.”

 

The Evil Queen’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been watching us?” 

 

“What? No,” said Regina, before her brain caught up. “Does that mean that you’ve been fighting her  _ already _ ?” 

 

“Only to knock some defensive skill into that thick skull of hers, the way you should have done years ago but were too afraid of - well,  _ me _ \- to actually make happen,” the Evil Queen said, refocusing instantly. “Does this have something to do with her visions?” 

 

“No,” Regina denied again, but it was too late - the Evil Queen had smelled the blood in the water, and was closing in on her for the kill.

 

“Is that why she won’t talk about them with me? She’s afraid of me?” she asked. “But not of you - because you  _ know _ .”

 

“Of course I know,” Regina said. “But for whatever reason, Emma hasn’t chosen to share that information with you, and I’m not going to betray her trust.”

 

“I think you just like having her trust when I don’t,” challenged the Evil Queen. Regina lifted her chin defiantly, but didn’t deny it. “Do you like having her confidence more than you like having her alive, I wonder?”

 

“Do you?” Regina returned. 

 

“There’s nothing I know that you don’t that endangers Emma - or any of our family, for that matter,” the Evil Queen said. “Whereas I can see in your face that the same isn’t true for you.”

 

“Alright - let’s try some trust building of our own, then, shall we?” Regina said, and stepped close again - close enough, this time, to be nearly nose to nose with her own face. “No lies, no games. Just  _ what is it  _ that you want?”

 

She was disappointed when the Evil Queen laughed in her face, but then, she hadn’t known what she was expecting. Bitterly, she tried to push down her flagging hope. 

 

“Was that supposed to be intimidation? Regina,” the Evil Queen said with some disappointment. “Just like I keep saying - I only want what you want. Shouldn’t be too hard for you to figure out.”

 

_ “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” _

 

The Evil Queen only laughed again. “Oh, this is a treat. I mean exactly what I said. No mind games here, Regina. Do try not to strain yourself thinking too hard about it.” 

 

Regina could sense she was being goaded, but couldn’t figure out  _ why.  _ Frantically, her mind ran through the things she wanted, as it always did when people kept asking her these last few weeks: Henry’s safety and happiness, Emma’s love, Snow’s forgiveness, absolution for her crimes, the feeling that someday she might deserve the life that kept slipping through her fingers, love, home,  _ happiness.  _ There were no surprises on that list. The core tenets had been the same since she was fifteen, two lifetimes ago. The Evil Queen couldn’t have changed enough in the last few weeks that her wants were so alien to Regina’s wants, or even the wants of Regina’s memories. She’d spent every night awake thinking about it, and coming up with nothing. 

 

But then, hadn’t that been the idea in cutting the Evil Queen out of her? That with her would go all her awful desires, every murderous impulse, every lustful thought, all her selfishness and tempestuousness and her desire to  _ take, take, take  _ that even then had been barely suppressed? Maybe all of it had gone with with Evil Queen, leaving Regina without even the memory of want. 

 

That had been the idea - her fingers on the syringe, Snow’s round eyes a few feet away, the anxiety rolling off Emma in waves, and  _ pain  _ -

 

The Evil Queen was looking at her with something like pity mixed in with the supercilious amusement. 

 

“Haven’t you bent yourself into enough shapes for enough people?” she said, and it almost could have been gentle. 

 

“What is that supposed to mean,” Regina asked, but it was more of a defeated murmur than anything. 

 

“It means,” the Evil Queen said, touching her cheek almost kindly, and forcing her to stare into her own eyes, “when will it finally be enough?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Regina left the vault in a haze, making her way home and preparing half of dinner on autopilot until the front door opened.

 

“Mom?” Henry called. The door slammed shut behind him. Regina couldn’t find it in her to chastise him. “What’s for dinner? Smells good.”

 

“Uh,” she said, blinking down at what she was making. Piles of vegetables had been diced and put neatly to one side of the cutting board. Meat was braising on the stove. A pot was simmering with her homemade chicken stock and - she sniffed - garlic and rosemary. She took the meat off the stove. “Soup, honey. Sound good to you?”

 

She looked around to find that Henry had sidled up next to her, and was looking at her worriedly. “Sure. You okay?”

 

“I think so,” she said, running an absently affectionate hand over his hair. 

 

“Uh oh,” he remarked. “What happened?”

 

Regina took a moment just to regard him. His voice kept deepening and he kept getting taller, neither of which she liked at all. But one thing was certain - he was old enough to know what was going on in his family. She sighed. 

 

“I talked to the Evil Queen today,” she admitted. “Some things she said are just… bugging me, I suppose.”

 

“She doesn’t like to be called that,” Henry said, grabbing an apple off the counter. 

 

Regina nodded absently before the implications set in. “What?” she asked sharply, whirling to face him. “Henry, have you gone to see her?” 

 

Henry shrugged unrepentantly, chewing a bite of his apple, and Regina thought she might have a heart attack. “Emma does,” he said once he’d swallowed.

 

“What Emma does is Emma’s business, and frankly I don’t care for her doing it either,” Regina said. “Henry, she’s dangerous.”

 

“No, she’s not,” he said. “I lived with her for ten years, and she loved me. Nothing’s changed.”

 

What Regina wouldn’t have given to have this stubborn defense of her worst self six years ago. “Henry,  _ no _ ,” she protested. “Everything’s changed. You don’t know her at all.”

 

“Are you really telling me that you didn’t love me when it was just you and me?” he demanded, and there was her little boy. 

 

“Of course not,” she assured him. “But where do you think that love came from? She’s not capable of it.”

 

“Really? Mom, I think you don’t give yourself enough credit,” he said quietly. 

 

“This is not a matter of giving  _ myself  _ enough credit,” she said. 

 

“Emma said that when this whole thing started, you were really adamant that she wouldn’t hurt us,” Henry said, changing tacks. “Why have you changed your mind? She hasn’t come after us, she hasn’t really  _ done  _ anything - “

 

“You and Emma have been talking about me behind my back?” Regina said sharply, alarmed. 

 

“You and Emma talk about  _ me  _ behind  _ my  _ back,” her son pointed out.

 

“We’re your mothers, it’s allowed,” Regina said flatly, crossing her arms. 

 

“And we’re your family, and we’re worried about you!” Henry returned. “We don’t understand why you went from believing she was okay to believing she was some psychopathic murderer or something.”

 

“She  _ is  _ a psychopathic murderer!” Regina said. “It just took me a while to finally remember that!”

 

“Because she hasn’t  _ been  _ a psychopathic murderer in over thirty years!” Henry said defiantly, and Regina tried to ignore the shame of the murders he still didn’t know about that first year Emma had been in town before remembering that it wasn’t her shame to feel. Why was she still feeling it? Hadn’t the whole point of this been to excise it? 

 

“Henry,” she said, hollowly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“I know that Emma said that you told her that no part of you would hurt her or me, and now suddenly you do,” Henry said. “And I don’t know what to do with that, because either it means that you’re right and some part of you wants to hurt me, or hurt  _ Emma _ , or it means that you hate yourself enough to believe that you could.”

 

She closed her eyes. “Henry,” she said again. 

 

“And I think I know which one it is,” Henry said, and she could feel him drawing closer. “I’m sorry I ever brought up that whole prophecy thing.”

 

She choked out a laugh. “When?” she muttered without thinking, and immediately wished she could take it back. 

 

“Every time,” Henry said resolutely. “I was a dumb kid back then, and I didn’t know what I was talking about, and I didn’t know what love looked like. I was a dumb kid a few weeks ago and I was afraid my mom was going to die with a sword in her gut, and I said stuff before I realized that I was convincing people that my other mom was going to be holding that sword.”

 

“You’re not a dumb kid,” Regina murmured, putting her arms around him. “I’m afraid, too.”

 

“You don’t believe it, right?” he asked anxiously, muffled against her shoulder. 

 

“I don’t know what I believe,” Regina answered honestly, sighing. Everything was a mess. Regina’s brain hurt. All she wanted was a long nap and to wake up not feeling off-balance for the first time since she’d set all of this into motion. “Is that why you’ve been going to see her?” Regina asked him. “You’re trying to get to know her, to convince yourself she can’t do it?”

 

Henry’s shoulders shrugged under her palms, and recognizing the signs of a restless teenager, she let him go. His eyes were downcast. “Kind of? I mean, she’s been coming to see me, mostly.”

 

She restrained herself from asking just how frequently they were meeting. “Has she ever tried to convince you that she was me?” she asked instead.

 

“Yeah. But I figured it out pretty quick. And once she realized I didn’t care, she stopped trying,” he said. 

 

Regina’s heart was in her throat. “Didn’t care about what, honey?” she croaked out, suddenly sure that some horrible crime of hers - past or present - was about to be uncovered. 

 

Henry looked at her oddly. “That you’d been the Evil Queen. Duh.”

 

She exhaled a shaky laugh. “That’s nice. What - what do you two talk about?”

 

Henry hadn’t let up on the strange look he was directing at her - Regina thought it might have actually intensified into a full blown  _ you’re not fooling me _ .  

 

“You’re trying to pump me for information,” he said in a tone that bordered on disappointed. 

 

“I’m not!” Regina denied quickly, but at another look from Henry that plainly said  _ who do you think you’re kidding  _ \- damn Emma Swan’s genes - she backpedaled. “Okay, fine, but only because I’m worried.”

 

“We’ve established that, yeah,” Henry said, shaking his head, and really,  _ where  _ was he getting that from? “But it’s not a secret. We pretty much talk about the same things you and I talk about. Like normal, only I usually end up having the same conversation three times instead of twice between you guys and Emma.”

 

“You mean,” she said hesitantly, wetted her lips. What was her game? “You’re just talking about school and homework and friends?” 

 

“Mostly. With all the stuff going on, sometimes I ask about magic and stuff. She is holed up in your vault, I mean. You know that, right?”

 

“Yes, I know,” Regina said, waving a distracted hand to dismiss it. “What about magic, specifically? Is it about Emma’s visions?”

 

“No,” Henry said, starting to look miffed. “I caught on pretty fast that Emma hasn’t told her about her visions, so I didn’t either. I’m not an idiot.”

 

“Well, you might not have known,” Regina said, nonchalantly picking away a lint on his shirt. 

 

Henry was giving her that look again. “You’re not actually afraid I’ve let anything slip,” he said astutely. “You’re trying to figure out why I talk to her.”

 

“Fine,” Regina said, giving up and dropping her hands in defeat. “Why. Why, Henry? Is something wrong with me? Am I not enough?”

 

“She’s my  _ mom _ ,” Henry said, and seeing the look of horror she could feel overtaking her face at the flashbacks hitting her in rapid succession, quickly said, “You are too. And of course you’re enough, but - mom, you’re different now.”

 

“Of course I’m different, I’ve cut out the Evil Queen!” she exclaimed. Why the hell was this so difficult for everyone to understand? What exactly was it that they’d expected?

 

“But that’s exactly it,” Henry said, fumbling the words a little under her gaze. “I thought if I saw her enough, I could start to understand you better.” 

 

That could mean anything. Regina stared. “What do you mean, you could start to understand me better,” she asked. 

 

“I  _ mean,  _ like that,” he said. “Like all of this. You’re afraid of things. You’re not fighting. Or you  _ are  _ fighting but you’re fighting the wrong things,” he amended, sensing her argument before she could launch into it. “I just… I need my mom who isn’t scared of anything back if we’re going to save Emma, because  _ she’s  _ scared. And I’m scared too.”

 

Regina didn’t know if that was possible, wished she could go back to that moment on that New York rooftop, syringe in hand, needle in vein. She wondered if Emma ever would have had her visions if she hadn’t pushed that serum into her body and split herself apart. 

 

But now - now her son was just a boy, scared for both of his mothers, and one way or the other, she was responsible for that.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

 

“Don’t be sorry,” he told her, frustrated. “Just fix it. Please?”

 

“I’ll try,” she promised, and unable to help herself, said, “But Henry? Please don’t go looking for her anymore.”

 

Henry stared at her a long moment with an expression she couldn’t quite place, but looked very close to the way he’d looked whenever she hadn’t been able to keep from using magic in the days right after the curse had broken.

 

“I’m not going to promise that,” he said, and Regina’s heart recoiled, because there was anger underneath it too. “Haven’t you been listening to anything I just said?”

 

“Henry….”

 

“No,” he said. “I love you. I love her, too. I’m not letting either one of you use me against each other.”

 

With that, he padded his way out of the kitchen, while Regina’s heart broke. 

 

She didn’t have much time to compose herself or still her shaking hands before the doorbell rang. Henry had already padded his way silently upstairs and she could hear the Nintendo running in his room, so Regina stirred the slightly sticking soup and turned down the heat before making her way through the dining room and foyer to answer it to find Emma Swan on her porch. 

 

“Uh, hi,” she said, awkwardly. “Can we talk?”


	6. Chapter 6

“Is there a reason for this visit?” Regina asked as Emma followed her back toward the kitchen. “You said you wanted to talk?”

 

Emma hesitated, but shrugged in a way Regina had long come to learn meant a self-conscious negative. “Nah. Not about anything in particular. Just wanted some company.”

 

“Hmm,” Regina said, eyeing Emma’s red-rimmed eyes when Emma had looked away, instantly concerned. “Any word from Hook?”

 

“What?” Emma asked, and seemed actually startled by the question. “Uh, no, not yet. Why?”

 

Regina pursed her lips. The Evil Queen had denied any involvement, but it was very possible that that didn’t mean anything at all. Emma seemed oddly more nervous than irritated at the question, and Regina quickly debated whether it was worth pushing when Emma was clearly distracted by something else and didn’t believe anything was amiss with the situation in the first place.

 

She couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong, whether Emma knew it and was avoiding it or not; and though she genuinely loathed the man, she loathed even more the idea of what it would do to Emma if she discovered that someone wearing her face had murdered someone she loved.

 

In the end, she decided against her better judgment to let it go. “You look distracted,” she observed instead. “What’s going on?”

 

Emma looked supremely uncomfortable, words clearly on the tip of her tongue and waiting to spill out.

 

“Emma, you’re worrying me. Whatever it is, it’s just me,” Regina reminded her.

 

“I don’t think I love him,” Emma confessed in a rush, and immediately looked sick.

 

Regina fought hard to keep the shock off her face, but wasn’t sure how well she succeeded when her whole body felt slightly numb at Emma’s words. Blankly, she thought that of all the conversations she’d expected to have with Emma about Hook today, this hadn’t been one of them.

 

A voice in Regina’s head was clamoring to demand what Emma was expecting from her - why Emma would have come to her at all with this information, especially when it looked like it was still raw for Emma herself. At any other time, she would have said _Good,_ or _So you finally figured it out_ , and offered her the guest bedroom for as long as she wanted while trying not to feed the embers of hope she’d long since stamped out when it came to Emma and everything she wanted from her. But with Hook mysteriously disappeared…

 

Something was off.

 

Emma was looking at her pleadingly, looking more fragile than she had since her early days of being the Dark One, trusting in some response Regina wasn’t sure she would stumble upon without her help.

 

Feeling very much like she was fumbling blindly in a dark room, Regina steeled herself and said, “Okay.”

 

Calmly, she pulled out a chair from the kitchen table, conscious of Emma’s eyes following her, and guided Emma towards it by the elbows. “Take a seat. Breathe.”

 

“That’s it?” Emma asked, oddly compliant as her eyes stayed focused on Regina. “No _I told you so_ or anything? No _we went to hell for him_?”

 

Something like an imprint of rage flashed through her mind at the reminder of hell, Robin falling and dying and leaving her alone the way she was always destined to be.

 

“I didn’t tell you so,” Regina said patiently when it had passed. “I told you that you were too good for him, and you are.”

 

“I don’t know about that,” Emma said under her breath.

 

“Well, I do,” Regina said, and for once, Emma didn’t argue with her. “And we didn’t go to hell for him, we went to hell for _you_.”

 

Emma’s eyes were very round as they stared up at her, and she was reminded of a younger Henry. “Oh,” she said, and was quiet.

 

Regina sighed, leaning against the table’s edge. “Is this a recent self-revelation?”

 

Emma shook her head, and seemed to snap at least a little back to herself. “Brand new. But also not, in a way. Sorry, I know I’m not making any sense.”

 

“That’s alright,” Regina said cautiously. “Are you - planning on breaking up with him?”

 

“Ugh,” Emma groaned, like she hadn’t even considered it as a possibility. “Yeah. I think I’ve got to.”

 

“Are you sure?” Regina couldn’t help asking, hating herself the moment the words came out of her mouth. This was just so sudden, and too much of something she’d wanted for too long. It was impossible to trust, even when it seemed to finally push Emma straight from _searching_ to _irritated._

 

“You _hate_ Hook,” she reminded Regina. “I thought you’d be happy for me or something.”

 

“I want to be,” Regina protested. “I just can’t help feeling - Emma, this is so sudden, you’re under an enormous amount of pressure and your boyfriend is _missing_.”

 

“Are you going to blame the Evil Queen for this too?” Emma demanded.

 

 _Yes_ , Regina thought. “I’m just concerned that you’re rushing into decisions that are counter to everything you’ve done in the last two and a half years.”

 

Emma looked away at that, looking suddenly angry and small. Regina imagined her at fifteen, though she must have looked much the same. “Maybe everything I’ve done in the last two and a half years is counter to the thirty years that came before that.”

 

“Maybe,” Regina agreed quietly. “Emma, what do you need from me?”

 

The sudden flash of openness in Emma’s eyes as they met Regina’s was enough to terrify Regina, who in a rush of adrenaline didn’t know what to do with the question that lay behind it. Emma was going to break up with Hook. Hook was missing. The Evil Queen was on the loose. And Emma was looking at her like she hadn’t in two years.

 

Emma must have seen her panic, because she looked away again, giving Regina enough time to wonder if she’d imagined it all. When she looked up again, Emma’s expression was an odd mix of mischievous and plaintive.

 

“Got any booze?” Emma asked her.

 

It startled a laugh out of her, and Emma looked pleased with herself. “Always,” Regina said. “You do look like you could use it. Your usual?” she asked, and Emma nodded vehemently.

 

Regina poured them both shots of tequila at Emma’s insistence while Emma herself went for the good whiskey in the back of the cupboard in Regina’s study. She emerged triumphant not long after, holding the bottle by its neck.

 

“Looks like the kid hasn’t found the good stuff yet,” she remarked. “Have you even touched this since the last time we drank it?”

 

“Henry won’t be drinking until he’s twenty one,” Regina replied the way she always did, knocking back a shot without Emma and refilling it over her protests. “And no. Zelena prefers wine, if you can believe it.”

 

“I really can’t,” Emma said, Regina handing her her shot. “Bottoms up?”

 

“To love,” Regina settled on as a toast. Emma tilted her head, but didn’t disagree, and with a clink of their glasses, both downed the shot.

 

“Ugh. I’m behind. More,” demanded Emma.

 

“You’ll be drunk.”

 

“No, I won’t. Anyway, you’re _cooking_ ,” Emma said. “At least I’m not drinking the hard stuff without a mixer and working with sharp objects and hot surfaces.”

 

“As if I can’t handle it,” Regina said disdainfully.

 

“I’m not saying you _can’t_ , I’m just saying you have a rule for literally everything else and it’s weird there’s not a rule for fire and knives.”

 

“I’m happy to turn over the cooking to you,” Regina said, eyebrow raised in challenge.

 

Emma didn’t disappoint. “Kid!” she yelled without looking away, and Regina jumped. “Get down here and I’ll teach you how to take a shot!”

 

“Henry, stay in your room if you know what’s good for you!” Regina hollered in response.

 

There was long pause. “I…. really don’t want to know?” came Henry’s voice from upstairs. Regina could feel his confusion from here, but it all felt so unexpectedly _good_ that she couldn’t bring herself to care.

 

“Is Emma staying for dinner?” Henry’s voice asked.

 

Regina looked at her expectantly, and for the first time all evening - the first time in longer than Regina could even remember - Emma grinned brilliantly. “Yeah! That cool?”

 

“Yup!” Henry called. “Go back to whatever the thing was.”

 

“We will!” Emma assured him.

 

“Unbelievable,” Regina told her at a normal volume, but couldn’t quite disguise the way she was grinning too.

 

“Yup,” Emma said, unrepentant, and _damn her genes_. She’d poured herself another shot and taken it before Regina could stop her.

 

“If I’d known it would only take a little alcohol to make you feel better, I’d have done it ages ago,” Regina remarked.

 

Emma smirked. “Does that mean I can keep going?”

 

“Pace yourself, I don’t want you vomiting all over the floor before we even get a chance to eat dinner,” Regina warned.

 

Emma didn’t respond beyond a satisfied hum, but did leave both bottles alone for the moment. All at once, Regina was struck by how disconcerting it was to have a _happy_ Emma in her kitchen again - not even a grinning Emma, but an Emma who moved freely and presumptuously and like she wasn’t afraid of inhabiting Regina’s space.

 

“Something’s changed,” she said, watching her. “You’re… more you all of a sudden. What’s actually happened, Emma?”

 

“Nothing,” Emma said, but was looking at her with an expression Regina couldn’t place. “Just, you know. Figuring some things out.”

 

“Like the fact that you don’t love your boyfriend of two years?” she asked cautiously. Two shots and a sip or two of good whiskey seemed to have taken the edge off for Emma, though, and she only shrugged, frowning.

 

“Yeah, like that,” Emma said. “I just needed to say it out loud.”

 

“Why did you come here to say it?”

 

For once in her life, Emma’s emotions were written all over her face when she turned to face Regina, and Regina caught her breath, trying to parse them out one by one before, inevitably, Emma’s face shuttered again, leaving behind only that awful, weak smile.

 

“Jesus, Regina,” she said, laughing just as weakly. “I think you know.”

 

It was a weak admission of everything they’d ever talked around, and it wasn’t anywhere near good enough, no matter the instinctive thrill it sent shooting through her. Not when Emma had invited herself here wanting to talk and drunk Regina’s liquor and _smiled_ for the first time Regina could remember. Regina pressed her lips together tightly.

 

“So what now?” she asked. “Are you going to tell him when he… ‘comes back’?”

 

“Probably,” Emma said, passing right over the air quotes Regina had failed to keep out of her voice. “Yes. More alcohol, please.” Obligingly, Regina pressed her glass back into her hand. “Everything’s just all so fucked up, you know?”

 

“I know,” Regina said, grim, and Emma looked contrite.

 

“I didn’t mean,” she said, and Regina waved her off.

 

“I know you didn’t,” she said. “Half the battle is knowing when things are fucked up, though, I suppose.”

 

“I guess,” Emma said again, looking at her all plaintive and no mischief this time. “I miss you.”

 

“Well, this is honesty hour,” Regina murmured after a beat, heart hammering away in her chest and no idea what to do about it. Maybe the alcohol was affecting Emma more than she’d anticipated, but in the blink of an eye, Emma had gone from open to touch-starved in a way Regina didn’t think she’d ever seen on her.

 

Regina permitted her hand to come up and push back a few wayward strands of Emma’s hair. “Emma,” she whispered. “What’s happening?”

 

It was impossible to stop touching her, not when Emma’s arms were coming around her waist and pressing her head just below Regina’s breasts, the sensation new and warm and overwhelming.

 

“This is about more than Hook, isn’t it?” she asked, slightly strangled.

 

“It’s about a lot of things,” was all Emma would admit. “I want to talk about them too, just not now.”

 

“Okay,” Regina said, mind whirling. She passed a hand through Emma’s long hair, tangled her fingers a bit. It was like she’d been touch starved too, and it reminded her of long lazy nights in this house with just her and Emma and their son, drifting off together in front of the television after dinner despite their best efforts, one or the other of them slumped on one or the other of them more and more inevitably as the months had passed. Regina remembered the long months after that once they’d made it back from Camelot and then the Underworld, and how those months had felt like a dream after everything that came after.

 

“Are you happy?” Emma asked her, the sound vibrating against her belly and making her jump in surprise.

 

“That’s a complicated question,” Regina answered carefully. She wasn’t sure that she wasn’t dreaming now, either. Emma had craned her head up to look at her, and Regina gave into the impulse to smooth over her hair again.

 

“I just want you to be happy,” Emma said. It was so sincere that suddenly it was too much, and Regina couldn’t breathe from the claustrophobia, disengaging and taking two steps back.

 

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” Regina answered honestly, fidgeting with her clothes and hair, looking over to the stove where the soup still burbled merrily on low heat. Shakily, Regina turned it to warm.

 

“Regina,” Emma said. “Why did you decide to use the serum?”

 

One more thing she wasn’t expecting to knock her off balance today. Wryly, Regina supposed she should start expecting it from Emma at some point. “Because I had it,” she answered honestly.

 

“Would you have before, if you’d had it before?”

 

There was no way Emma was only now realizing the effect their trip to New York had had on her, and how very much of a last straw it had been after the past year of nonstop loss - much of it that wasn’t even officially hers to claim. Emma’s eyes on her were open and full of trust and transparency, so different from the surprise and disgust Regina had found there when she’d stupidly laid herself bare in that old apartment.

 

“Probably not,” she admitted. “I had Robin.” She was aware of how much it sounded like she’d been one relationship away from homicidal decisions, but then, she thought bitterly, that much had always been true.

 

“He made you happy,” Emma said solemnly.

 

Regina shrugged. “Yes.” It wasn’t untrue, even if she’d been admitting to herself over the last weeks that the happiness she’d found with him was more of a relief than anything else. Something about Emma now in this strange moment was begging for the truth from her, and so she struggled with the words. “I didn’t…. I didn’t want anything when I was with him.”

 

It wasn’t something she should have said. Sure enough, Emma picked up on it immediately, piecing everything together with lightning speed. “You’re allowed to want, Regina,” she said, brow furrowed, much as she’d said before.

 

And much as she’d done before, Regina laughed hollowly. “Tell that to the Evil Queen.”

 

“Whatever she wants, it hasn’t been dangerous,” Emma argued, and Regina scoffed. “No, Regina, listen to me. Why are you so afraid of her?”

 

“Because suddenly you aren’t!” Regina said.

 

“It’s been _years_ since I was afraid of you - any of you!” Emma said. “Why can’t you understand that? Can’t you take that as a good thing, for once?”

 

“It’s been _two months_ since you were last afraid of her,” Regina said, “and no, no I can’t when you still believe that it’s my face under the hood of the figure stabbing you to death in your visions, regardless of which one of us is wearing it!”

 

Her voice was shaking. Unexpectedly, Emma ignored the last part of what she’d said, and focused on the first part. “Two months?” she asked, confusion all over her face. “What - New York? Regina, I wasn’t afraid of you. I was afraid _for_ you, but you were so determined to go through with it I didn’t want to try to stop you.”

 

Regina couldn’t speak, couldn’t say that if Emma had said anything, if even _Snow_ had said anything, she would have stopped. Emma was searching her face. “You know that, right?” she asked, voice small, and Regina didn’t answer.

 

“I used the serum because I wasn’t happy,” Regina said finally, hoping that would be answer enough. “Is that what you want to hear?”

 

“Of course it’s not what I want to hear,” Emma said, wounded. “I just - I want to fix this, and I don’t know how.”

 

“This isn’t something that can be _fixed,_ ” Regina said.

 

“Oh yeah? What part?” Emma challenged.

 

 _The part where you’re committed to a pirate! The part where we wasted two years not talking to each other! The part where you’re afraid of me! The part where you believe that either one of us is destined to kill the other!_ Regina wanted to yell. She said nothing, and raised her chin.

 

“Regina, I just want you to be happy.”

 

“Stop _saying_ that when you don’t mean it,” she said, furious.

 

“I became the Dark One for you!” Emma said, outrage coloring the very edges of her voice, because this, _this_ was a thing they didn’t talk about. “How can you say I don’t mean it?”

 

“Because, you idiot, my happiness doesn’t exist without _you_ ,” Regina shouted.

 

Her words hung between them, ringing slightly as they echoed against the tile and high ceilings. She lifted her chin defiantly, daring Emma to challenge her.

 

Emma didn’t look shaken, exactly. She actually looked a bit like she had back in New York in Neal’s abandoned apartment when Regina had made the mistake of confessing how much a part of her the Evil Queen still was. Her lips were parted, her eyes wide, stumped for words in the same way.

 

“My happiness has never existed without you,” Regina confessed, more quietly. “Even when you were a thorn in my side and threatening to break my curse, you were always the key. Why on earth would you think that if you took yourself out of the picture now, I’d have any chance?”

 

Emma was staring at her like she’d never seen her before. “As the Savior?” she asked, nearly whispering.

 

“As _you_ ,” Regina said, thinking irrepressibly of Emma with a blank dagger and face full of determination, Regina’s savior to the end. There was something about this conversation, or maybe just about the way that Emma had reached out and demanded her touch, that was making Regina helpless not to reestablish contact, and she reached out to grasp Emma’s arms, watching Emma’s eyes search hers for something. “There’s something between us, Emma. I haven’t been able to figure it out, not completely, but I think it has to do with the prophecy, and we’ve just been too stubborn and blind to see it since your mother brought it up again.”

 

If she’d been expecting more of Emma scoffing at the mention of the p-word, she was disappointed when Emma only took a shaky breath, nodded, and said, “Yeah. I know.”

 

“You _know_ ,” Regina said, slightly dumbfounded. She hadn’t really expected Emma to be so calm about it.

 

“I asked Aladdin about the shears. How to use them, I mean,” she admitted.

 

Regina’s blood ran cold. “When was this?” she demanded sharply.

 

“Two days ago?”

 

She relaxed a little at the revelation that Emma hadn’t been keeping this a secret from her, but immediately tensed again at the fact that in the process of discovering how to cut herself off from her fate, she must have discovered something binding her fatalistically to Regina.

 

“And?” Regina asked, tightening her grip on Emma’s arms when Emma still made no move to pull back.

 

Emma hesitated, and though she was still lightly grasping Regina’s forearms in return, Regina had a sudden, stabbing moment of panic that this was it: this was the moment that she learned the thing she’d been dreading having confirmed for her. She was the figure under the hood.

 

“Do you know how the Fates work?” Emma asked. “Like with the threads, and everything.”

 

Mutely Regina shook her head.

 

“They apparently bind living things together,” Emma explained. “Like living connections, threads between everybody whose life you touch or whose life is touched by you, as far as I understand it. There’s one between me and you.”

 

That… wasn’t unexpected. Regina stared, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “And?” she prompted again, this time more urgently. “What exactly does that mean? Are we connected just to each other, or to a particular event in time?”

 

“Just to each other, as far I as I get it,” Emma said.

 

“Then things _are_ in flux,” Regina surmised, watching her closely. “Anything could have changed. Anything could still happen.” The relief threatened to make her a little dizzy. All of this worrying for nothing. She laughed a little, but the tension didn’t leave Emma’s face. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I don’t know if that’s actually true,” Emma said. “Especially with…”

 

Frustrated, Regina pushed away from her. “Emma, _forget_ about your visions. At this rate, you’re the one who’s going to make sure they actually come true.”

 

“Just because you’ve decided fate works a certain way doesn’t mean it does,” Emma pointed out.

 

“Maybe you should take that advice,” Regina advised her, scowling. “You can’t tell me you’re still thinking of using those shears.”

 

Emma’s silence was confirmation enough. Disgusted, Regina started to walk away, only for Emma to catch her arm, pleading.  

 

“Let go of me,” Regina said, hating how upset this was making her.

 

“Regina, please.”

 

Regina jerked her arm away, seething. “Tell me, _Emma._ What does cutting your fate actually entail?” More silence from Emma, and Regina laughed with absolutely no humor, because she’d figured it out too. “I thought so. That’s the part the prophecy you want so desperately to believe in makes abundantly clear, isn’t it?”

 

“Our connection branches between you and… other you,” Emma said quietly. “I can cut one and not the other.”

 

“Then what are you waiting for?” Regina asked. “You’ve got your answer. I’ve made it really easy for you. A good thing I did separate myself from the Evil Queen after all.”

 

Emma’s expression was pained. “Regina,” she tried.

 

“No, no,” Regina said, gesturing toward the front of her house. “I mean it. Go on. Find her and get it over with. Quick and painless, right? She won’t even know.”

 

“I don’t want to cut the threads between me and either one of you,” Emma said. Regina could detect a little too much of Snow White’s earnestness under her words, and bristled at it. “Why do you think I haven’t done it yet?”

 

“I really can’t answer that, Emma,” Regina said. “You’re the one who’s so gung-ho about severing yourself from the part of you that’s the Savior. A fairly _non-negligible_ part of you, might I add, but that’s your prerogative,” she added.

 

“Come on, this reaction isn’t about me,” Emma said, rolling her eyes.

 

“Oh?” said Regina. “I suppose it’s about me?”

 

“Of _course_ it’s about you,” said Emma. “That’s not a bad thing.”

 

“Don’t condescend to me,” Regina bit out.

 

“I’m _not,_ ” Emma protested. “I’m just saying. I understand how upset you are, because I’m upset too.”

 

Regina pushed down her instinct to lash out with a retort. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Emma had been this honest with each other about their emotions - two years ago, before everything went to hell? - and to be fair, this wasn’t exactly a huge revelation, but it was recognizable as an olive branch.

 

“Then what are you going to do?” she asked quietly. “You’re right. I don’t like it. I can’t explain it, but I don’t, and I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” said Emma, looking away and tucking her long blonde hair behind her ear. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I only asked Aladdin to show me in case there was a moment that came where there was no other option.”

 

“You mean, your vision actually happens,” supplied Regina.

 

“Right.”

 

“So, in all honesty - why not just do it?” Regina pressed. “I don’t like it, you don’t like it, but you think it might save your life.”

 

Emma smiled in that pained way that had been so common for her since she’d hosted the Dark One. “ _You_ don’t,” she said.

 

As if that had ever been enough to stop her from doing anything stupid. Regina raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “As much as I hate to admit it, and as you’ve been reminding me, this isn’t about me,” she said.

 

“But that’s the thing. I think I’ve been wrong about that,” Emma said. “With two versions of you out there, I think it’s at least partly about you. Look, don’t you think that this is way too coincidental? You cutting yourself into two people, at the same time I’m given a way to separate the Savior’s fate from myself? And my visions on top of it?”

 

“I think we’ve both made a series of questionable decisions that have gotten us here, and the consequences took on a life of their own, as they do,” Regina said. “That’s just life.”

 

“Maybe,” Emma said, but it was clear she was only trying to appease Regina.

 

And well, _fine._ Regina shifted her stance, hands on hips. “Okay. Tell me this, then, if you’re so determined to believe in fate,” she said. “How do you know that those visions of yours aren’t predicting that you’ll use the shears the way you’re itching to?”

 

Emma’s mouth opened silently, clearly not having considered that.

 

“There isn’t a right answer,” Regina said.

 

“Sure sounds like you think there’s one,” Emma muttered.

 

“I just want you to know what you’re getting into,” Regina continued. “If there’s no way to prevent your visions, then is it really worth cutting out so vital a part of you as what makes you _you_?”

 

“This is not about _me,_ ” Emma said furiously, face shining and open; and again, Regina worked hard to bite back the first thing that came to mind _\- yes, we’ve covered that -_ and really took her in. Righteous indignation and tempered goodness. Glory and wildness, beauty and unpredictability: the woman Regina had fallen in love with.

 

It was like accidentally uncovering a long-buried treasure when all that were left were vague, general memories of shape and size and color. Nothing could have prepared Regina for the way the sight and the soul of a reemergent Emma Swan would cut right through her like a sword and leave her gasping for breath and weak in the knees.

 

“Regina?” Emma was already saying, concern overwriting that glorious, glorious vision. Regina clutched at the counter next to her and waved her off. Honestly, it had been all she’d needed. Because _that_? Had been the most Emma Swan thing she’d ever seen in her life, and she should have put the pieces together before now.

 

“Please don’t tell me that the reason you’re so determined to use those shears - the reason you’re so determined _to sacrifice an integral part of yourself_ \- is to protect me,” she said.

 

Emma had the grace to look sheepish - but not regretful. Her back was tall and proud, and kindness and strength were written into all the lines of her face. Some part of Regina was weeping in recognition. Some part of Regina was drowning in darkness, Emma’s shouting voice a lifeline to the other side.

 

“Either I kill you, or you have to deal with killing me,” Emma said, and the confirmation was like an anvil on Regina’s heart. “It’s not fair.”

 

“It’s not fair to you, either,” Regina pointed out as evenly as she could.

 

“Maybe,” Emma acknowledged. “But this is pretty unfair for me no matter how this plays out. At least this way neither of us is stuck killing the other.”

 

“It doesn’t have to,” Regina said, overcome by the urge to touch her, to offer some kind of comfort. “Anything could happen.”

 

Emma smiled when her fingers made contact with her cheek. “Maybe,” she said again. “But there’s a part of you that still doubts that. And do you really want to take that chance?”

 

It was a good argument, and Regina was halfway to being convinced. But the part of her trapped in the godforsaken cloud of darkness _howled_ , and the rush of anger that overcame her was so potent that she actually shuddered before she jerked her hand back, ignoring Emma’s bewildered look.

 

“ _No_ ,” she said. “I am not going to let you insult either of us by acting like the verdict is already sealed against us. You don’t like it? Then _fight._ ”

 

Emma was blinking at her in confusion like she was struggling to focus. “I’m not saying I think it’s already sealed,” she protested.

 

“Then stop _acting_ that way,” Regina said. “If you really want to make you own decisions, you’d better damn well start making them instead of actually letting other people maneuver you in the way you’re so terrified of!”

 

“I’m _trying_!” Emma said. “I’ve been trying for so long and it’s never been good enough. Why can’t you see that this is something that could actually work?”

 

“I see that it’s something that you want to work, which isn’t the same thing,” said Regina. “You’ve already decided what the threat is and built a blinders around your head so that you can’t see that the situation is more complex that what you want to deal with, which is so unlike you that I don’t even know where to start.”

 

Emma laughed, a hint of insanity tingeing the edges. Regina started forward in concern, but Emma threw out an arm to hold her at bay. “No, stop, it’s okay. I just haven’t been feeling very much like myself lately either, so you may be right about that, too.”

 

“I think there’s something going around,” Regina said, grimly. “You can do better. _I_ can do better. After all we’ve been through, nobody is going to tell us what we can’t do, including choose not to kill each other.”

 

“That’s a lot of pretty words,” Emma said.

 

“ _Enough_ ,” Regina said, and God, she could actually _feel_ the fire in her eyes. It was like coming back to life. It was like seeing color again in a world she hadn’t realized was grey, and all she wanted was to drag Emma along with her, to get her to _see._ “You want to make you own choices? You want to be your own person? Figure out who she is, _and be her._ ”

 

 _Come back to me,_ Regina didn’t plead - at least, not out loud. But she tried to communicate it in the grip she had on Emma’s hand.

 

Emma seemed to teeter on the edge, Regina holding her gaze desperately. For a moment, she’d thought she’d lost as Emma’s eyes shuttered and went glassy, before she realized with a cold stab of fear that she’d seen the beginnings of this once before and hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

 

“Emma, Emma,” she said, falling with her, hand on her back, as Emma’s hands went to her head and she moaned. “Emma, stay with me. You’re right here, you’re with me.”

 

Hazily, she wondered if her voice was only making matters worse if Emma truly believed that she’d eventually find her face under that hood. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, as soothingly as she could, rubbing a hand up and down Emma’s back. “It’s okay. Focus on me, focus on me _here_.”

 

It was all she could think to do. Henry’s footsteps were on the stairs, and he appeared in the kitchen a moment later. “Mom?” he asked just as Emma let out a low wail.

 

“Her visions,” Regina said. “Have you seen her like this while she’s having one?”

 

Her son had gone white. “Uh, once. I think she’s been trying to hide them. It wasn’t like this, though.”

 

“Okay,” Regina said, trying to stay calm, only half aware that she’d dragged Emma halfway over her lap. “Okay. Sweetheart, why don’t you come here and talk to her?”

 

“That’ll help?” Henry asked, already scrambling to comply. Regina frankly had no idea if it would, but Henry wasn’t waiting for an answer. “Hey Emma. You’re okay,” he said, looking up worriedly at Regina. “What do I say?”

 

“That’s fine,” she said. “Just the sound of your voice might help.”

 

“What about yours?” he asked, and she shook her head.

 

“I think it might not,” was all she said, and was relieved when understanding lit up his eyes.

 

It went on for what seemed like hours, Emma shaking in her arms and nearly crying in pain, Henry murmuring nonsense until finally she lost consciousness.

 

“Mom?” Henry asked, alarmed. Regina brushed her hair back, checked her pulse, her temperature, did a quick magical scan, and found nothing seriously amiss.

 

“I think she’s just out,” Regina said. “I hope they’re not all that way for her.” If they were, Regina was starting to have some understanding of why Emma was so thoroughly convinced of their power. After that, Regina had questions of her own about the source of those visions - because even at her darkest, she’d certainly never had the power to affect _that_.

 

“What do we do?”

 

Regina sighed, looked down at the unconscious woman in her lap. “Let’s get her upstairs in the guest bedroom. I’ll call Hook - we’ll see if this brings him out of hiding.”

 

“Maybe just tell him she’s staying the night?” Henry suggested.

 

“Why?” Regina asked, eyes narrowed. “Is she hiding her visions from him, too?”

 

“I just don’t think she’d want him knowing that she passed out from them,” Henry said, but wouldn’t meet her eyes.

 

Regina chose not to press, figuring it was one more thing she didn’t want to know about Emma’s relationship with the pirate when Emma would never tell her anyway. She pursed her lips, grabbing a hold of Henry’s shoulder and teleporting them upstairs. Henry got her settled in bed while Regina took the much more unpleasant chore of calling Hook.

 

Surprisingly, there was no answer. Not the first time, not on the redial, and not five or ten minutes later when she figured she’d done her duty and left a voicemail. With any luck, he might check it; and even if not, once he started wondering where his girlfriend was, Regina’s was always for better or for worse one of the first places he checked.

 

Henry was perched on the bed when she reentered the room Emma had often used in that brief stretch of time they were actually friends who did things like spend entire evenings together. The sight of her in that bed sent a brief pang through Regina’s heart - it was easy to believe that she might wake up blearily any moment and curse when she realized how late it was - but she brushed it aside and drew up level with Henry.

 

“Is she gonna be okay?” he asked her worriedly.

 

Uneasy, and unable to pin down a specific reason for it, she ran her fingers through his hair compulsively. “I hope so. We’ll keep an eye on her tonight.”

 

“Did you reach Hook?”

 

“I left a voicemail,” she said, holding up her phone. “Why don’t we go finish dinner while we wait?”

 

Henry snorted. “For what?” he asked, too darkly for a fifteen year old.

 

Regina’s eyes were still on Emma.

 

“Anything,” she said.


	7. Chapter 7

It was dark when Emma woke in an unfamiliar place with a headache and the sense that something was _wrong_.

 

Her heart rate was panicked like there was an immediate threat, and it was difficult to shake off the haze of sleep to make sense of it. Moving made the pain in her head explode and colors burst behind her eyes.

 

Something had happened. The last thing she remembered was Regina’s kitchen, Regina pleading with her for something -

 

Another wave of pain, and she doubled over at the waist, nearly toppling off the bed she’d sat up on. Parry, parry, thrust -

 

Her hands were shaking when she came back to herself again, and she was shocked she wasn’t holding a sword. A bed, she was sitting on a bed. As she acclimated to the pain, she started to be able to make out her surroundings - Regina’s guest room, one that Emma had basically taken over a few years back.

 

Hazily and carefully, Emma stood up, and was glad when she didn’t fall over. Her fingers touched the familiar ornate vanity opposite the bed - very tasteful, very rich, _very_ Regina - and -

 

A hooded figure, trying desperately to see past it, their sword low and _pain, God the pain_ -

 

Emma was doubled over, clutching an unmarked spot between her ribs. The pain wasn’t fading the way Emma was sure it usually did. She felt like she was underwater. She brought her own fingers up to her eye line, and was vaguely surprised to see blood.

 

Some part of her was howling, and instinctively, she pushed it down the way she always did, but it didn’t seem to be working as well as it usually did.

 

“Shut up,” she told it blearily, wincing with every move. “Shhh.”

 

Emma brought her fingers up again, not really knowing what she was looking for, but there wasn’t blood on them this time, so maybe that was it? _God_ her head hurt.

 

As if on cue, she was transported again to Main Street, where the hooded figure was advancing on her, sword in hand -

 

She snapped out of it half a second later, gasping.

 

“What the fuck,” she whispered.

 

Her visions had been coming more frequently lately, sure, but nothing like this. She stumbled to the door, hand against the wall for guidance and support. Regina would probably have an idea. Or at least she’d keep Emma company while she went crazy.

 

Three more versions of the vision came and went on her way to Regina’s room, each leaving her more disoriented than the last. If she’d been in a clearer frame of mind, she’d have just called out; but some combination of feeling like a guest trespassing in the middle of the night and not wanting to wake Henry kept her quiet. It wasn’t far to Regina’s room.

 

But Regina’s room was all the way on the other side of the stairs, and by the time Emma reached the staircase, she was wracked with shivering and clutching her head, the insistent feeling of wrongness having grown into a knot in the pit of her stomach that warned her she needed to be somewhere that wasn’t here, and _immediately_.

 

The thing in her mind had been screaming the whole time too, which _hadn’t fucking helped_ , and now Emma was too tired to to anything but let it say what it wanted to in as many voices as it wanted.

 

Everything devolved into a blur for a while, and it wasn’t until Emma found herself on Main Street that her awareness of her surroundings really snapped back into place around her as she shivered in her sleeveless black tank.

 

“Whoa,” she muttered to herself. “Guess I figured out the poofing thing.”

 

But even that moment of awareness was short-lived. It must have been at least two in the morning on an ordinary night, but the silence buzzed loud with a thousand things reaching for her from her past and future. On the back of her eyelids fell a shower of electrical sparks, ten year old Henry the mayor’s son pointing out Jiminy Cricket walking down the street; in her hands, the pommel of a sword dug deep with resistance into her struggling palms; before her stood Regina, caught up in a thousand bands of darkness trying to consume her whole. Parry, parry, thrust. They wouldn’t stop coming. They would _never_ stop coming.

 

“No,” she whispered, sinking to the ground, her arms trying to hold herself together. God, she felt sick. Did she want to throw up now, or had she wanted to then? Or would she later? Fumbling, her hands reached in her pocket for the shears, drawing them out and holding tight as she could.

 

 _Emma_ , a thousand voices were calling for her.

 

Was she still the Dark One? She bit back a sob, checked the shears again, relieved when they hadn’t changed, hadn’t revealed itself to be a dagger bearing her name that she would never be able to get rid of.

 

 _Emma,_ they kept calling, _Emma, Emma, Emma._ She’d had practice, though, and she didn’t look up. Seeing them gave them a power, made them real in a way she couldn’t fucking afford with all the pressure the world had ever exerted on her pressing around her now. Something was happening. Something was coming. This was it, she was _sure_ of it.

 

“No, no, no,” she muttered.

 

“Emma!”

 

“No,” said Emma, closing her eyes and trying to find that place behind her mind where all the lines of fate that bound her glowed bright.

 

“Emma!” exclaimed the voice, much closer now, and Emma blinked her eyes open in surprise, finding Regina’s face startlingly close. Had she woken up and followed Emma here?

 

Regina took advantage of her surprise to knock the shears out of her hand, letting them clatter to the ground out of Emma’s immediate reach so that they reappeared in Regina’s hand in a puff of purple smoke before Emma could spare them a thought.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” Regina demanded, eyes flashing bright. Emma tried to make a desperate grab for the shears, only for Regina to move them away with a sharp, “No!”

 

“You promised me you’d let this be my decision!” Emma said, her actual outrage at this fact providing her a moment of clarity she seized onto.

 

“I promised no such thing,” Regina retorted. “Is _this_ what you’ve been hiding from me?”

 

But Emma’s heart had stopped at her first denial, forcing her awareness to sharpen just a little more into the present moment as she realized which Regina she was dealing with.

 

“No,” she whispered again, feeling it slip again as soon as she had it. _Parry, thrust, sore hands._ “You. Please, you have to get out of here.”

 

“What are you talking about, I’m not leaving you like this when you clearly need help. Emma. Emma!”

 

The figure under the hood was bearing down on her, the sword sliding fast and unexpected between her ribs. Emma gasped, her eyes refusing to focus.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Regina was snapping at her. “Is this more of the visions you believe you’re having?”

 

“Please,” Emma said. The figure under the hood was emerging; Emma twisted her head away and screwed her eyes shut. “Don’t you understand yet, you have to get out of here, please.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on!”

 

Emma only laughed. “Can’t you feel it? This thing between you and me… we don’t have a choice.”

 

“We always have a choice,” Regina said, bewildered, and Emma shook her head.

 

“Please,” Emma said. “Just leave me alone here, just get away from here.”

 

“Why?” Regina asked sharply. “Miss Swan, explain yourself!”

 

Under ordinary circumstances, Regina deploying the _Miss Swan_ tactic would incite Emma to action either through spite or anger or fear. But Emma had already succeeded in finding those threads in her mind on sheer instinct and raw power, and was too lost in the feel of them weaving about them both and tightening like a noose. Unaware of the danger, Regina’s gaze held hers and demanded answers Emma was too far gone to give.

 

There was a sword in her hand - how had it gotten there? - and Regina jumped at the same time Emma lumbered forward, making an uncoordinated grab for the shears she still held away from Emma’s grasping fingers.

 

“Give me the shears, Regina,” Emma gasped. Those threads of fate were already weaving around her, blindingly bright and insidious. If Emma hadn’t known what they were, she would have stopped and stared at her heartstopping beauty: Regina, all dark hair and dark eyes, encircled and illuminated by all the bright powers of fate. Beautiful, so beautiful, but _wrong._  

 

 _No,_ Emma thought, despairing, _not again._ She could feel the nameless dagger in her hands, wavering between the hilt of the sword and the empty craving for the shears. She closed her eyes now, fumbling for the _right_ strand, sorting them out sightlessly before her with the fingers of her left hand.

 

“You’re scaring me,” Regina’s voice said. “Emma, what are these? Emma, _focus._ What are they? What’s going on?”

 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” was all Emma could say.

 

“ _What_ don’t you want to do?” Regina asked, a desperate edge starting to come into her voice. “Emma, whatever it is, if you don’t want to do it, then _don’t._ ”

 

The world was already slipping into a supernatural vision of threads that glowed bright in the night even with the shears still firmly in Regina’s hand. In her mind, the figure in the hood was advancing on her again, and Emma struggled to block her blows with her own sword, before she came back to herself, the world still glowing bright with a mockery of potential even as it closed in on her and this moment.

 

It wasn’t something she could describe. She’d never felt closer to Regina than she did, somehow, right now, the connection between them vibrating strong and frenetic like it recognized the moment it was in. Deep down, a voice whispered at her, resolving into a sudden clarity, saying _Now, now. You want to save her, dearie? You want to save yourself? Cut it. Sever it clean through. Earn your freedom. But you have to do it now._

 

Emma sobbed soundlessly, and felt Regina draw cautiously closer.

 

“Emma, what are you seeing?” she asked.

 

“Fate,” Emma whispered, and risked opening her eyes to find Regina ensnared and still so unaware. “Can’t you feel it - binding us here?”

 

“I’m not bound to anything,” Regina said grimly.

 

Emma wondered if she was thinking about the same thing Emma was - the darkness descending on her in a panic, seeking her out as a quarry it would never leave alone.

 

But Emma had done it - had found the line glowing between them pulsing with a manic life, and had touched it, feeling a surge of anger and love and strength pulse through her in time with the rush of her blood through her veins.

 

 _Cut it!_ shrieked the Dark One. _Cut it and it will free you - it will free_ her _! Cut it and you both walk away from this alive!_

 

Struggling through the pain splitting her head, Emma smiled. “Me either,” she agreed, and with her eye on the shears, she attacked.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The magic Regina threw up was a reflex - and thank God it was, because for the split second behind the bright light that obscured a sword-wielding Emma from her sight, Regina was physically stunned as if Emma had actually made contact.

 

“Emma!” she barked. “What are you doing? It’s _me_ , you idiot.”

 

“I know,” Emma said.

 

“Do you?” Regina asked, heart pounding, sure that this was the moment that everything collapsed. Neatly, Regina dodged two more attacks with magic until Emma finally threw the sword down from overhead. Regina’s magic instinctively called forth a sword of her own to block the strike, and Regina used the momentum to throw Emma off and away.

 

“Emma, stop this!” she yelled.

 

Emma’s eyes were still half closed, the fingers not clutching the hilt of the sword moving through the air, clearly lost to something Regina couldn’t pull her away from. Bewildered, Regina looked between their swords, wondering why the hell Emma would bother with swords at all when she had raw magic at her disposal, and enough of it that she could best Regina herself in a fight if she bothered to use her mind and her instincts.

 

“Is this payback for the time I made you fight me with a sword?” she asked as Emma circled her, and Regina warily kept her guard up.

 

But something else was nagging at her memory. She’d never managed to trick the details out of anybody, not even Emma, but her instincts told her she was right.

 

“Is this your vision?” Regina demanded. “Are you living out your vision right now? Because I have to say, for someone who thinks fate is -”

 

Blindly, Emma came at her again, and grimly, Regina hung on to the shears in one hand and the sword in the other.

 

“Why do you want these? Emma, let me help!” she said, Emma, already rounding on her again, didn’t seem to hear.

 

The simplest thing would be to try to magically immobilize Emma, but they’d always had an unspoken agreement between themselves to never use magic against each other, and while Regina had been willing to push that to train Emma - for _this moment_ , apparently - she was reluctant to break that trust by pushing it that far.

 

“I know, I know,” Emma murmured, but it wasn’t to Regina. Her hand reached out for Regina’s shoulders, and warily, Regina let her. Her fingers ran over something Regina couldn’t see, miming rope beneath her fingers that seemed to run its way around Regina in cords. Emma’s eyes were bloodshot and watery when she met them.

 

“I know. I don’t want to do this,” Emma whispered again, eyes intently on the thing she was holding that Regina couldn’t see.

 

A sudden suspicion hit Regina as she remembered a similarly lost and confused Emma, whispering to the shadows in Camelot.

 

“Who are you talking to, Emma?” she asked carefully. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

 

Emma’s eyes snapped up to meet hers, fierce in a way Regina hadn’t seen in Emma in over a year, but with something more underneath it, a darkness that was only halfway familiar to Regina.

 

“I can do anything I want,” Emma said, and though the words seemed to agree with Regina’s, it only deepened Regina’s uneasiness.

 

“Get away from her!”

 

The burst of magic that emanated from Regina was more instinct than anything else, focused on Emma as she was. It seemed to shock Emma out of whatever mindset she was in, too, and Regina was able to whirl around to see the intruder.

 

Hook was sprawled out on his ass fifteen feet away, groaning and already gearing up for another attack.

 

“Hook?” Emma asked with distant recognition.

 

Regina looked at him with disgust. “Of course you would choose the worst possible moment to show up again,” she said.

 

Hook ignored her. “Swan, get away from her,” he repeated. “Your father and the lad are on their way.”

 

Regina swung around again, finding the silhouettes of what could only be Charming and Henry coming toward them. At least there would be an ally in Henry, her sweet boy, but Charming… she had no idea what to predict from him.

 

“I just need the shears,” Emma said, eyes swinging back around to Regina, regaining their singleminded focus. Regina hardly recognized her, and instinctively grasped them more tightly, looking around more nervously than she cared to admit to find Charming and Henry nearly upon them.

 

“Aye, and we can get them for you,” Hook was telling Emma, starting to advance on Regina with murder in his eyes. “This will all be over soon.”

 

“Alright, _stop,_ ” Regina told him, taking a step back despite herself. “Look at her eyes. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that isn’t Emma.”

 

“And who are we to believe made her that way?” Hook asked. “Forgive me for not trusting a witch who stole my heart and left me to die in the woods!”

 

“You still have your heart,” Regina said dismissively, and smirked dangerously. “Want me to prove it?”

 

“ _Mom_!” Henry was calling.

 

“Henry, stay out of this,” Regina said, eyes fixed on Hook.

 

“That isn’t your mother, Henry,” Hook said. “Can’t you see she was attacking Emma?”

 

“Liar,” Regina snarled. “Can’t you see that the Dark One has it’s hold on her again? I’m just trying to keep her from hurting herself.”

 

“And why should we believe that?” Charming asked, finally stopping next to Hook. “Regina - “ Hook huffed indignantly, and Charming shot him a look - “ _Regina._ I’m not attacking you myself right now because for some reason my wife and my daughter have trusted you to this point. But you have to understand how this looks.”

 

Regina laughed helplessly, unable to believe they were having this conversation while Emma was actively attacking her and muttering to herself all the while. “No, I _don’t_ know how this looks, because no one will tell me anything!”

 

“And there’s a reason for that,” Charming said, keeping his eyes on Emma, concern blossoming the more he watched. “You trust that.”

 

“It’s getting harder and harder with every second to _keep_ trusting that,” Regina said impatiently, and ducked another blast of magic from Emma. “What the hell are these things?”

 

“That’s one of the things you’re going to have to trust us on,” Charming said maddeningly.

 

Emma was advancing again determinedly, magically dragging Regina’s feet toward her in the process. Regina hit the ground and rolled, sending just enough magic back to topple her balance. “Charming, control your daughter!” she said.

 

It kept her from noticing Hook ready to blindside her until it was too late, and the shears had been wrestled out of her hands and her own arms had been pinned behind her back. Balking furiously, she wrestled out of his grip and turned her attention back to the shears, which Hook had already tossed to Emma. Regina tried to magic them out of her hands, but it was no use - Emma was ready for it, and was past the point where she was paying attention to anything but whatever world she was seeing beyond them and whatever voices she was hearing.

 

And in that moment, Emma tall and cold and distant as she’d never known her, Regina knew real fear.

 

Henry was shouting, Charming was frozen to the spot. Emma’s fingers were doing that thing again, sorting through something Regina couldn’t see.

 

“I can do anything that I want,” she said in a perfect monotone.

 

“Emma, Emma, think about this,” Regina said, wishing desperately she knew what was going on.

 

“I have,” Emma answered, turning her cool eyes on Regina along with that awful, haughty turn of her chin Regina had hoped to never see again. “I’m doing this for you.”

 

“You might be missing your white hair and your dominatrix outfit, but you don’t fool me,” Regina retorted. “This isn’t for me. This was never about me.”

 

Emma’s eyes flashed. “How dare you. I became _this_ for you!”

 

“You became _that_ for her!” Regina returned.

 

Something in Emma’s eyes softened almost imperceptibly. “For both of you,” she murmured.

 

“Do it, Emma,” Hook said, impatient. “It’ll all be over and we can go home.”

 

“Emma, don’t do it!” Henry yelled, rushing forward, caught only just in time by Charming’s strong arms.

 

“Do it before you lose your chance,” Hook said, stepping close to her, but Emma’s eyes had already sought out Regina’s. “It’s now or never, love, _do it_.”

 

For a moment, Emma seemed to startle back into her own self. “This is the only way,” Emma whispered. “I just want to save you.”

 

“Save me from _what_?” Regina asked furiously. “From you?”

 

“If I have to,” Emma said, her face very serious.

 

“Screw that,” Regina snarled, and attacked for the first time with no holds barred. Emma was blown backward in a wave, the shears knocked out of her hand.

 

“ _Mom_!” Henry was screaming again, but Regina had no idea which one of them he was screaming for. Hook and Charming were on her in a moment, their own swords drawn, and she batted them away. Ridiculous, everyone bringing swords to a magic fight.

 

“Stop it,” she told them. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

“ _Bullshit,_ ” Hook said, a thunderous expression on his face.

 

“ _I don’t want to hurt you like this,”_ she amended herself angrily, and addressed Charming with one eye on Emma doggedly getting up twenty feet away. “And I don’t want to hurt _you_ at all!”

 

It didn’t help. Regina was reminded of what felt like a thousand years ago, Snow and Charming fighting her at every opportunity, Charming with just this look of grim determination on his face. Regina could feel the familiar murderous joy at the thrill of the fighting rising up in her, but she just as determinedly pushed it down to keep her focus. Emma was readying herself for an attack, and she pushed the two men down long enough to drive Emma back again.

 

“Will somebody tell me _what the hell is going on_?” she shouted. “Henry? Please, what are Emma’s visions of?”

 

Henry had put himself out of the way for once in his life, potentially because he wasn’t sure which of his mothers to help in a situation like this, and his eyes darted unsurely between the two of them now. “ _Henry!”_ Regina snapped.

  

“Fine,” Hook said. “You really want to know? She’s having visions of her death, on a night just like this, in this exact place. And the person driving the sword into her gut? Is _you_ , your majesty.”

 

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to throw me off my game,” Regina snarled. “Visions can be anything.”

 

Hook laughed darkly. “Alright then, you asked. You remember the prophecy about the Final Battle? The one your vengeance set in motion in the first place?” He gestured around them. “Welcome to it.”

 

The world stopped for just a minute, trembling around Regina where she stood. Emma was coming again, relentlessly. _I just want to save you_ , she’d said, and Regina knew - that could mean so many things.

 

“That prophecy predicted something very different from my killing Emma, as I recall,” she said as composedly as she could.

 

“Do you really want to risk it?” Hook asked her.

 

“Risk what?” she said. “I will _not_ be the one to kill Emma, whatever else happens here tonight.”

 

“No?” Hook questioned. “Better tell that to Emma, then, and see if she believes you.”

 

It was a twist of the knife, and Regina gave into the overwhelming desire to simply freeze him on the spot the way she should have done when he first arrived. She scowled. _Honor._

 

 _“Regina_ ,” Charming exclaimed, and she followed suit with him.

 

“This is between you and me,” she told Emma. “You really believe I’m going to kill you?”

 

That at least got through to Emma, who blinked at Regina as if just seeing her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think we’ve been fated here and now.”

 

“Emma,” Regina said, disappointed. “After everything, you don’t believe you and I together can beat anything - fate included?”

 

“I think there are things neither of us can beat, and that’s just the way the world is,” Emma said.

 

“See, now that doesn’t sound like the Emma Swan I know,” Regina said, a different kind of fury spilling into her blood, hot and fast and sweet. “Just what kind of nonsense has my other half been filling your head with?”

 

Emma smiled faintly. “The same kind of nonsense as you, actually.”

 

“Well, that’s a relief, Savior,” Regina said, mockingly, pleased when it got a flinch out of Emma.

 

“Don’t call me that,” she said.

 

“Why not, Miss Swan?” she taunted. “Hit a nerve? Weren’t you just going on about how you were going to use those ridiculous things to ‘save’ me?” she asked, pointing at the shears Emma was still holding loosely.

 

“That’s different,” Emma said.

 

“Is it, now?” Regina said. “Because here’s the picture I’m putting together. You had visions of me killing you, you've been reminded about a prophecy where you kill me, and instead of trying to kill me to avoid both of them altogether, you’ve been trying to figure out how to save me.”

 

Emma didn’t respond, and it was confirmation enough. Regina took one step, and then another, and Emma didn’t retreat. “See, now _that_ sounds like the Emma Swan I know. So I guess you are still in there, somewhere. Are you going to prove it for me?”

 

“ _Don’t_ ,” Emma said, a hint of her own fury coming out to match Regina’s, and Regina thrilled to feel it resounding deep in her own blood.

 

“Well,” Regina said, feigning disinterest. Emma knew her too well, and was watching her carefully. “Here’s what I know. You need the Evil Queen to be the Savior. So _be_ the Savior, Emma.” Regina called her sword back into her hands, and grinned at the sound of steel ringing on steel as Emma’s came up to meet her.

 

“Save yourself _,”_ Regina said.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Regina had woken to an empty house around midnight and panicked. Emma could be anywhere, and in her state of mind, could be doing anything; and with Henry gone on top of it Regina’s nerves were frayed to their bitter ends.

 

Her first call had been to Snow, and fortunately, that was enough to make everything clear.

 

“Hook came by about fifteen minutes ago,” she’d said, and her voice had been strangely apologetic. “I was just about to call you, actually. He said that… well, the Evil Queen… had attacked him two days ago. He only just regained consciousness in the woods.”

 

Regina didn’t have time to appreciate the fact that Snow had called her _the Evil Queen_ for once. “Oh my God,” she’d said. “Is he okay?”

 

“Some bruising around his throat,” had been the careful response. “He and Charming have gone after the Evil Queen now.”

 

“Where?”

 

“I don’t know,” Snow had said. “Probably to your vault. Regina, what’s going on?”

 

“Emma’s missing,” she’d said bluntly. “She had another one of her visions that left her pretty incapacitated earlier, and she was sleeping it off at my house, and now she’s gone without a word.”

 

“Maybe she just went home,” Snow said, but with a healthy amount of doubt in her voice. “Hook didn’t mention anything about her. I did think that was odd.”

 

Regina rolled her eyes. “Henry’s gone, too.”

 

“That… does seem strange,” Snow said. “Maybe he went with her if he was concerned about her?” It was a stretch, and Snow clearly knew it as well as Regina,

 

 _Or maybe Hook called him_ , Regina thought uncharitably, and Henry, who was worried about his other mother and knew how much Regina and Hook loathed each other, had gone with him and Charming to try to keep a bad situation from blowing up.  

 

She was distracted by Snow’s sudden gasp. “Regina, you don’t think - her visions?”

 

“The Final Battle, you mean?” Regina said, but was unable to fit any sarcasm in it past the fear lodging itself in her throat. “I’m on my way to Main Street.”

 

“I’ll check the vault just in case,” Snow said. “Be careful.”

 

“Back at you,” Regina had said, and hung up.

 

Teleporting herself to Main Street took a matter of seconds. Once she’d hastily shaken off the lingering cloud of purple magic clinging to her, she was greeted with her worst nightmare: her other self, driving Emma back with a sword.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” she screamed at the Evil Queen, who cursed loudly. Regina was close enough to see the very real terror in Emma’s eyes even as she stepped and swung apparently on autopilot.

 

“Trying to keep her from using those shears!” the Evil Queen shouted back. “If you don’t mind, I’ll get back to it.”

 

She sent the Evil Queen flying without another thought. Emma took the opportunity to scramble for she shears on the ground five feet away from her - _goddammit -_ and the Evil Queen snarled, _“No_ ,” and raised her sword again.

 

Regina magicked the sword out of the Evil Queen’s hands and got a dirty look for it.

 

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” the Evil Queen shouted at her. “Let this be between me and Emma.”

 

And suddenly, everything became clear. “No,” said Regina, advancing towards them. “This has never been between you and Emma. This is between you and me.”

 

“You’re a fool,” the Evil Queen said, but it not longer mattered when Regina attacked.

 

They were evenly matched in terms of skill, strengths, weaknesses, and knowledge of each other. “ _Stop_ ,” Emma’s voice called somewhere in the distance, but the Evil Queen’s eyes were glittering with the thrill of the fight, and Regina was looking darkly back at her.

 

“Ready to give up?” the Evil Queen asked her.

 

“Never,” said Regina.

 

The Evil Queen was the first to attack then, and steadily, Regina held her off until the very moment she said, “Too bad you never even got to kiss her.”

 

Regina slipped, and the Evil Queen took advantage of the opening and sent her crashing into a nearby car, laughter echoing in the still night air.

 

“Good little Regina, and all the things she wants,” crooned the Evil Queen as she approached. “Guess that dies with you.”

 

“You don’t want me dead,” Regina said, guessing wildly as she dragged aching body into a crouch.

 

“Don’t I?” the Evil Queen said, eyes hard. “Don’t you want me dead? Or have you had a change of heart - considering that I haven’t the privilege of crushing yours yet?”

 

“I didn’t want to crush your heart,” Regina said softly. “I’m sorry.”

 

The Evil Queen stopped her advance only when their faces were mere inches apart, and Regina was staring into her own eyes.

 

“But you did it anyway,” the Evil Queen said. “Apology not accepted.”

 

Sword in hand, the Evil Queen raised it behind her, the point aimed at Regina’s heart, and unbelievably, Regina couldn’t do anything but stare at her in stunned disbelief.

 

“I think I might just cut yours out of your chest,” the Evil Queen told her. “How do you like that for your reformation of me?”  

 

“ _No!”_ screamed Emma.

 

It was enough to halt the Evil Queen’s movement at the last moment, and both she and Regina turned toward Emma’s voice. Emma stood, eyes clear and lucid for the first time since this mess had started, and focused determinedly on Regina. She’d gotten the shears in one hand, and the fingers of the other were trembling around something unseen, already in the motion of raising the one to the other and closing the blades -

 

There was no time to scream or call out. Regina did the only thing she could: she neatly flipped the sword out of the Evil Queen’s distracted hands and thrust it deep between the her ribs.

 

The world slowed to almost a stop in the moments immediately after. Regina didn’t even have the presence of mind to see if Emma had dropped the shears, unable to look away from the betrayal on the Evil Queen’s face. _Something_ had been severed - she was certain of that much.

 

She caught the Evil Queen on the way down, and was aware of a warmth spreading through her clothes where they pressed together. The Evil Queen didn’t protest, didn’t say a single word, seemingly as unable to look away from Regina as Regina was unable to look away from her.  It was like looking at a stranger and finding something that was uncannily familiar in some unknowable way. It was like looking in a mirror and being unable to control the reflection. It was her own face. It was her own body. It was her own blood.

 

“Regina? _Regina!_ ”

 

 _This must be what it’s like to watch yourself die,_ Regina thought blankly, cradling the Evil Queen over her lap. She’d done this before. Syringe, serum, pain, pain, pain, and a her own heart crumbling to dust under the pressure of her own hand. That had been so much neater, so much cleaner, the wind sweeping all evidence of the deed away as if she’d never done it. The wind tangled her hair in front of her eyes now, and she didn’t bother swiping it away.

 

“I don’t want to do this,” she whispered. The Evil Queen smiled, pained but gentle. It was her own smile.

 

“We always knew it would come to this, one way or the other,” the Evil Queen said. “At least it was you. Me. Well. You understand.”

 

Regina understood, remembered being publically tied to a stake and blindfolded while her enemies watched and waited for the moment of her death. She’d been sure nothing could have been worse than that. This, though - this was worse.

 

“ _Regina_ ,” Emma said breathlessly, falling to her knees next to her. “Oh my God. What do we do?”

 

“I - I don’t know,” Regina stuttered.

 

“Are you hurt too?” Emma’s fingers prodded the space between Regina’s and the Evil Queen’s bodies where her blood pooled on both of their clothes.

 

“No, no, I’m fine,” she said, staring at her own face.

 

“Okay,” Emma said. “How do we help her? Can you heal her?”

 

The Evil Queen choked a laugh. “Should have focused on healing instead of defensive magic,” she said. “I guess it actually was too difficult to tell me that I was who you were facing in your visions?”

 

“Shut _up_ , Regina,” Emma said, not unkindly. Regina’s mind was whirling. Emma grabbed her shoulders, and said, “ _Focus_ , Regina. Tell me what to do.”

 

“I can’t heal her,” Regina said, already feeling the drain from the magic she’d been pouring into the Evil Queen since they’d collapsed here. “Maybe it’s because she’s me, I can’t redistribute my own energy, I can’t - “

 

“Hey, hey, stop. Calm down,” Emma said. “Can I heal her?”

 

“No, no, you don’t know how,” Regina said. “It would take too long to teach you, she’ll be gone by then.”

 

“Like I said,” the Evil Queen said from below them, but dissolved into coughing.

 

“Okay,” Emma said. “Okay, um. Put some pressure on that wound?”

 

Regina doubted that would have an effect, and the Evil Queen looked ready to object, but shakily, Regina did it without question. The Evil Queen yelped in pain and cursed, the look in her eyes wild and unsure.

 

“No, _stop_ ,” she screamed, but Regina ignored her.

 

“What are you doing?” she asked Emma, who was reaching into her pocket.

 

Emma had gotten out the shears again, and Regina’s insides lurched violently as she blurted out a horrified “ _Emma_.”

 

But Emma was looking at her, at the Evil Queen bleeding out and cradled in Regina’s arms, like she understood. Regina couldn’t stand to see the pity there, and looked away.

 

“I’m not going to use them,” Emma said. “I just need to see.”

 

“See what?” Regina asked, panicking, but Emma was already in another world, lips pressed tightly together, her grip on the shears sure and steady.

 

“Are you finally going to tell me what those things are?” the Evil Queen asked. “Can’t do anything about them now. You don’t have anything to lose.”

 

“The Fates’ shears,” Regina replied, pressing down harder. “Emma was going to try to avoid her visions by severing the thread fating her to be the Savior.”

 

“Worked out for her,” the Evil Queen remarked.

 

“Maybe if she’d done it earlier, it might have,” Regina replied, clinging to the fledgling self-directed anger trying to spark to life in her chest, something to burn through the numb haze of the moment.

 

Emma’s hands were reaching again, and they both fell quiet as they plucked through invisible threads in the air, closer and closer until it was clear she was reaching for something between Regina and the Evil Queen. Regina felt a foreign sensation like a tug on her soul and gasped; across her lap, the Evil Queen’s eyes were wide as she choked at the same time, blood starting to spill out of her mouth and down her cheek.

 

“What’s - “ she started, a cough turning into a groan.

 

“I don’t know,” Regina said.

 

Emma’s face was a mask of studied determination, her open eyes seeing something beyond what either of them could. It reminded Regina of another night in this very spot on Main Street, a different object in her hands for Regina’s sake, both of their souls breaking open on different sides of darkness, _you’ve worked too hard to have your happiness destroyed_. Regina cradled the Evil Queen closer unconsciously, Emma so close to them both that she could feel the warmth of both of their bodies seeping through her clothes as a counterpoint to the stain spreading across her belly.

 

She could feel the Evil Queen starting to fade, not all at once as she had when Regina had crushed her heart into dust, but slowly and torturously so that Regina could feel every moment of it drawn out and spun into time. Emma’s fingers were plucking at thin air, and Regina could feel it as the world slowed into nanoseconds.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said between . “I shouldn’t have… I didn’t understand….”

 

“Neither did I,” the Evil Queen whispered.

 

“I’ve been so empty,” Regina said. “I’m afraid.”

 

“Me too,” the Evil Queen said, and Regina knew she was agreeing with all of it. A blank horror stretched out before her where she would be perpetually less than herself, missing something that someday she wouldn’t even know how to define anymore.

 

“I want,” said the Evil Queen, but couldn’t finish.

 

“Me too,” said Regina, hysteria rising fast in her chest at the bone-deep feeling of her slipping away.

 

She took her hand away from the wound, and the Evil Queen’s hand found hers, twining together without thought, their blood sticky and binding between them. Regina could swear she felt her own gut groaning in empathy, skin and muscle and tissue breaking apart and weeping angrily, and she collapsed over the Evil Queen, unable to hold herself up. The Evil Queen’s arms came around her, and Regina groaned into her own shoulder, unable to tell who she was anymore.

 

“I can do this,” Emma was whispering to herself. “I can do this. Shut _up_.”

 

Something was happening. Something was whipping around her - the wind? The darkness? - and Regina found herself paralyzed, half in fear and half in pain. She had a syringe in her fingers, serum in her veins, a heart in her hand beating _thump, thump, thump_.

 

“Let go,” Emma said. “Regina, _let go_.”

 

“Emma,” her voice cried, but she was unable to tell where it had come from. “Emma!”

 

Emma with a dagger and wild eyes, unreachable and unstoppable with her hand held high and features illuminated by lightning - so beautiful, and so wrong. Her heart hurt. Regina held tighter, screamed, “Emma, _no_!”

 

“Regina, let go!” Emma was shouting. “Trust me!”

 

It wasn’t Emma that Regina didn’t trust. Maybe she managed to say that out loud, because Emma said, “Trust _yourself!_ Please! I can’t - _”_

 

It was the desperation in Emma’s voice that finally unlocked something deep within her, and the pressure on her heart released as the wind reached a fever pitch and Regina finally surrendered herself to it, feeling herself borne up, up, up.

 

Time expanded and contracted around her like breath, like a beating heart, and Regina was senseless to it, feeling only her own blood binding her together, seeing only her own eyes looking back at her, wide and dark. _I want_ , she thought she said, thought she reached out only to find that she was already being held.

 

She was surprised to find pavement under her palms when it was over. The night was still and dark and quiet, and she looked up, dazed.

 

“Emma?” she called, trying to push herself up, surprised to feel her knees were already under her.

 

Emma’s hands were there to support her immediately, one straying to feel over her ribs where - Regina realized - there was a bloodstain.

 

“You’re okay,” Emma whispered. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

 

She was clinging to Regina tightly, and swaying slightly from the vertigo, all Regina could do was cling back.

 

“What happened?” she asked hoarsely, and Emma laughed.

 

“I don’t really know?” she said, and laughed again, unperturbed when Regina burst into tears and gripped her even more tightly. It felt like she was crying out two and a half years of pain, Emma’s hands against her back and Emma’s laughter against her chest a more soothing counterpoint than anything she could have imagined for herself.

 

It was a long time before either of them were calm enough to draw back, and even then they didn’t entirely give up contact with each other, despite the audience they could hear murmuring behind them at the spectacle of the mayor and the sheriff, the Evil Queen and the Savior, co-parents and sometimes friends, but on the whole, two people who didn’t usually cling to each other for support.

 

Tonight, Regina was long past caring, and if Emma’s arm around her shoulders was any indication, Emma was on the same page. “Looks like the gang’s all here,” she commented, and then asked with some surprise, “Hey, did you freeze them? When did you do that?”

 

Without looking, Regina waved a hand and undid the spell, listening to the three men’s various cries of surprise, outrage, and “ _Moms!”_ which made Emma chuckle again but stay firmly put.

 

“You’re in a good mood,” Regina noted, leaning into her just in case she got any ideas.

 

“Yep,” Emma said unapologetically. “Aren’t you?”

 

Henry nearly bowled them over in a mess of teenage energy and limbs. “Moms, what was that, are you okay? Mom, are you like - all you again?”

 

Emma caught her eye, and then her hand over their son’s back, grinning widely like she’d finally figured something out and was just waiting for Regina to catch on.

 

And Regina laughed, because she was already there. She felt suddenly lighter and bigger than the sky stretching dark and velvety from horizon to horizon overhead.

 

Despite their company, Regina had never been more tempted to lean over and kiss her.

 

“You know what? I really am,” Regina told her.


	8. Chapter 8

In the week that followed, Emma hardly saw Regina. 

 

They’d both crashed emotionally pretty hard in the hours after what had happened on Main Street, Regina quietly withdrawing herself from Emma’s touch once they’d been hustled by their family - sans Killian, which was okay because the last thing Emma had wanted to do was deal with him and his voice in her head - into the loft to be fussed over. It had been a good choice on Snow’s part, because it was neutral territory, and gave first Regina a chance to leave with Henry and a loaded glance in Emma’s direction, and then Emma a chance to slink upstairs to be alone. 

 

Emma spent the next week generally avoiding people and hiding out at her parents’ place. Fortunately, they didn’t ask a lot of questions, which Emma knew was hard for them - especially Snow - and let her have time to process. The only thing was that avoiding people in general also meant avoiding her boyfriend, her son, and his mother; and while her parents seemed to have figured out that she was never going back to Killian, they were generally disapproving of Emma’s reluctance to face Henry and Regina. 

 

Which was terrible, and made her feel like a terrible person, because it wasn’t like there was a  _ reason  _ Emma could point to why the idea of even casually running into them made her chest seize up in panic. 

 

But the fact of the matter was that while Emma usually saw Henry at least once a day, not seeing Regina for a long stretch wasn’t actually that much of a departure from what had become their norm. Oddly, that realization left Emma feeling off balance and craving her company maybe  _ because  _ she was finally aware of the fact that this had been their norm for the past two years. 

 

Or maybe it was because she was finally clear-headed enough that the past two years felt like a dream. Or a nightmare, if she was being honest with herself. 

 

“How did I not realize how much the Dark One was still a part of me?” Emma demanded of Archie at their next meeting. 

 

“If I had to guess, that’s how the Dark One works,” Archie said, calm as ever. “I might recommend talking to Mr. Gold if you want to understand more of what actually happened. He’s been the Dark One for a very long time, and the break had had where you were the Dark One instead probably gave him some perspective on what it’s like to have had that power in you and suddenly being without it.”

 

“Yeah,” Emma muttered. “Like that’s gonna happen. Former Dark One talking to a current Dark One?”

 

Archie shrugged mildly. “If you want answers, you could do worse. It’s entirely up to you, Emma.”

 

Emma had opted not to, keeping her eyes averted every time she passed the pawn shop as if Gold could feel her gaze. He was just creepy enough that for all she knew, he actually could. 

 

Archie had been kind or tactful enough not to mention the other former Dark One in town, and Emma continued to retreat to the old bedroom she’d occupied in the old days when it had been just her and Mary Margaret. The nostalgia was comforting in its own way, like despite the wailing at odd hours from her little brother, and her parents’ growing exasperation with her using them to hide out, she could pretend that the biggest of her worries was her ten year old troublemaker of a son, deciding whether or not she wanted to be his mother, and the stuck up bitch of a mayor plotting endlessly against her across town. 

 

After a week, her parents sat her down gently at the breakfast table. Emma smelled an intervention, and she was right.

 

“Emma, you’re always welcome here, and we love you,” Snow said, holding on to her hand. Betrayed, Emma looked to her father, who quickly looked away. “We know you’ve been through a lot, but we’re afraid you’re just hiding, and not actually dealing with it. It’s not healthy.”

 

“I’ve been seeing Archie,” Emma protested.

 

“Henry misses you,” Snow said predictably, and Emma groaned. 

 

“ Ugh . Underhanded, Mom, bringing my kid into it.”

 

“Regina has called me six times this morning alone,” Snow continued, holding up her phone as evidence.

 

“ _ Ugh,”  _ Emma groaned more emphatically. “Even more underhanded.” 

 

She couldn’t help but notice that Snow strategically hadn’t said anything about Hook, however, and took that as a sign.

 

So Emma had done the next best thing after calling Regina or her son back herself, and gone to her own house. She did it while her parents were both at work and baby Neal was at daycare, just so she could pretend she’d never left if she needed to, staring at her own front door balefully and trying to figure out why she’d she ever lived here.

 

Killian answered the door before she could decide to ring the doorbell or just let herself in. 

 

“Swan,” he said, looking like he’d seen a ghost.

 

“Killian,” she said awkwardly. 

 

For a moment, he only continued to stare, but then snapped out of it. “Are you - are you going to come in?”

 

Emma couldn’t really think of something she wanted less in that moment. “Uh, no,” she said, trying for an apologetic smile. “I think it’s best if I stay out here.”

 

“You aren’t coming home, then,” he said, seeming to deflate; and deep down, it stirred some emotion in Emma. 

 

“No,” she confirmed. “I think this shouldn’t have ever been my home, to be honest.”

 

“How can you say that,” he asked, wounded. “I gather that we’re breaking up, which I’ve been expecting since… that night… but does our life together really mean so little to you?”

 

“It’s not about our life together,” Emma told him, and it was only half a lie. “This was the Dark One’s home. I thought I could build over it, and I was wrong.”

 

Killian was starting to look hopeful again. “If it’s about the real estate, we can find another - “

 

“No,” Emma said firmly. “You’re right. We are breaking up.”

 

She could see him struggling with the decision to fight for a long moment. “Am I going to hear through the grapevine that you’ve taken up with her majesty two days from now?” he asked bitterly.

 

“Frankly, it’s none of your business even if you do,” she told him, and he scowled. 

 

“She tried to take my heart!” he said. “She nearly choked me to death!” 

 

Emma had already heard this from her parents, and so wasn’t surprised. She’d been a little more surprised than maybe she should have been when they’d told her, given that Regina had told her straight up that she still had those impulses; but then, the Evil Queen had managed to surprise even Regina in the end. 

 

“You’re still alive,” Emma told him. “You still have your heart. And are you really telling me that if your worst impulses weren’t separated into a completely different person, you wouldn’t do worse? Killian. I  _ know  _ you.”

 

Something about the tone of her voice must have discouraged him from responding to her. All he muttered after a moment was, “I don’t actually know that I still have my heart.”

 

Emma reached into his chest and drew it out to where he could look at it, gasping and wide-eyed. 

 

“There. See?” she said, and put it back in his chest. “Satisfied?”

 

He was staring at her like he'd never seen her before. “Swan, I don’t know who you are right now,” he said. 

 

Emma shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know who I am at all.”

 

He looked at her for a long moment, but Emma could see the moment he gave up. He sighed, and went to lean his arms on the porch railing. Warily, Emma followed, but remained standing upright. 

 

“I’m sorry I made you a Dark One,” she said into the silence. “But I don’t think - I mean, the Dark One is still in me. And I think it’s still in you, too. And that’s not good for either one of us.”

 

He didn’t ask what she meant. “Aye,” he agreed, sounding very bitter but very resigned. “Did you ever love me?”

 

Emma didn’t have a good answer for that, but she knew the only answer she could give after everything. “Yes,” she said, and swore she would never lie about that again to anyone.

 

As expected, it mollified him, and his entire body slumped. Emma was relieved to see it.

 

“I was going to propose, you know,” he said wistfully, looking around at her. 

 

Emma stared, only able to think  _ Thank God you didn’t. _ Killian seemed to read some of that thought on her face,  _ thankfully,  _ and backed off. 

 

“Alright,” he said, sighing. “Have it your way. You’ll want to sell the house, I’m assuming.”

 

He sounded so put out by it that Emma snorted a laugh. “It’s yours it you want it. Didn’t cost me a thing.”

 

“Ah,” Hook said, as if he understood. Emma could tell by his tone alone that he really, really didn’t. 

 

As it turned out, Killian didn’t really want to keep the house either, and Emma was strangely relieved by that, too. It took him almost no time at all to pack up the things he’d accumulated since transitioning to life on land and move them into a room at Granny’s, and Emma used magic to pack up the things she wanted to keep - the things she considered actually  _ hers  _ \- over the course of the next few days, making piles outside the house to donate to various charities set up in Storybrooke since the first curse had broken. 

 

Henry got wind of it on day two, appearing  _ almost  _ soundlessly in her living room in a way that did her proud, deep under her nerves.

 

“Hey, kid,” she tried, heart racing with anticipation. 

 

Without a word, Henry crossed over to her and after a tense moment, wrapped his arms around her. Emma returned the embrace, finding herself inexplicably on the verge of tears. 

 

“You okay?” Henry asked gruffly. 

 

Emma laughed to dispel her tears. “When did you get so grown up?” she asked to avoid answering the question. “Stop it.”

 

“Can’t,” Henry said matter of factly. “You’re stuck with me.”

 

“Good,” said Emma. “You gonna help me with all this?”

 

Henry had, and they’d spent the day grunting and slogging through the physical labor that Emma reverted to, finding that the honest physical work of it made her feel more and more like herself the longer she did it. She stipped off her blouse until she was just in her jeans and tank top - “ _ Ugh, _ Mom,” said Henry - and her muscles flexed visibly as they worked. 

 

It was almost dark when Henry went home to Regina’s, but not without a pointed, “Mom’s been asking about you.”

 

“Yeah,” Emma said. “I’ll call her. I promise.”

 

She’d gone for an impromptu run in the dark, waving at David, who honked as her passed her on patrol. 

 

“Are you ever gonna come back to work so I can stop doing all the night shifts?” he yelled at her on his way past, rolling along at five miles per hour. 

 

“Whiner!” she yelled back at him, and he laughed. 

 

“You coming home tonight?” 

 

“I don’t know. I’ll give Mom a call if I do.”

 

“Sounds good. Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

 

It was nearly ten o’clock when she arrived back in front of the house. Something was moving in the shadows on the porch, and Emma tensed, approaching cautiously, ready to defend herself if necessary. 

 

It wasn’t necessary. Propped up against her door in leggings and a deep blue blouse was Regina, casual and gorgeous and watching her expectantly. 

 

“Hey,” Emma said, trying not to stare at her legs.

 

“Hey,” Regina replied, giving her a measured look that said she knew exactly what Emma was trying not to do. 

 

“Uh. I guess you heard.”

 

“Henry mentioned you were moving out, yes,” Regina said, her tone not giving away anything. 

 

“I broke up with Hook,” Emma blurted out.

 

“Yes, I figured that out,” Regina said. Emma still couldn’t read her tone. “I’m glad you came to some kind of conclusion on that.”

 

“Instead of invading your house and drinking all your alcohol again?”

 

“You’re always welcome to invade my house and drink all my alcohol, Emma,” and it was almost something Emma would label  _ fond.  _

 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Emma said, listing a little. “You look good.”

 

Regina smiled wryly. “Thanks. I feel good.”

 

“Really?” Emma asked seriously, holding her gaze, and Regina’s smile softened.

 

“Yes,” she assured her. “It took some time for me too, after… but I do feel better. Better than I have in… well, a long time.”

 

Emma slid down to sit on the porch next to Regina and stared at her hands, and confessed, “I don’t really know where to go from here.”

 

“In general?” Regina asked her. Emma could hear the unspoken  _ Or between us?  _ and shrugged. 

 

“Anything,” she said. 

 

She wasn’t expecting Regina to take out a familiar pair of golden shears and offer them to her calmly. 

 

“Maybe these will help?” she said, more questioning than anything. 

 

Emma shook her head and pushed her hand away, faintly nauseous. “Keep them. I don’t…. I don’t even want to see those again.”

 

Regina regarded her seriously. “Something happened to you when you were holding them,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

 

Emma hesitated, wondering just how much she remembered from before she’d reversed the split, and how much she’d realized she was seeing at the time. “Let’s just say that those things and the Dark One shouldn’t mix. There’s too much power in them.”

 

“I had wondered,” Regina confessed quietly. “There seemed to be more going on that just you and me. Or just you, even.”

 

“That was still part of it. I think - I think there’s a part of me that’s always going to be the Dark One, or at least remember being the Dark One. And that part didn’t like you,” Emma admitted. 

 

Regina looked at her questioningly. 

 

“You’re a threat to it because you balance me.,” Emma clarified. “You can bring me back to myself.”

 

Regina’s face had softened into something like adoration, and it warmed Emma’s insides as much as it made her squirm in discomfort. 

 

“But I guess you were right all along - my visions weren’t real,” Emma said, breaking her gaze. 

 

Regina only shrugged lightly. “Maybe they were. Maybe the prophecy was too. Maybe we just changed too much -  _ willed  _ too much. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure. I take it this means your visions have stopped, though?” she asked curiously. 

 

“Yeah,” Emma confirmed. “Not one since that whole thing went down.” 

 

Regina nodded, satisfied. “That’s good.”

 

“I’m still seeing Archie,” Emma confessed, and Regina looked at her, surprised. “Guess I’m more fucked up that I realized. And that shouldn’t mix with that much power, either.”

 

“That’s… a very informed decision,” Regina settled on saying. “I’ve actually been thinking of going to see him again, myself.”

 

“Regina,” Emma whispered, and Regina turned to her as if she were waiting for some judgment to come out of Emma’s mouth. Emma grabbed her hand instead and squeezed. “That’s a great idea, if you’re ready.”

 

“I think…. I think I have to be.” Regina’s voice was small, but steady, and she didn’t let go of Emma’s hand. 

 

“Yeah. I think I know the feeling,” Emma said, chancing a look at her, and found herself rewarded with a quick smile that reflexively coaxed one onto her own lips. “So, uh, what actually did bring you all the way out here on a night like this?”

 

“Well, I figured that it Henry had broken the unofficial embargo you’d imposed on us, I might as well try my luck,” Regina said. 

 

“You used our son as a spy?” Emma asked, trying to inject some outrage into her voice, but failing miserably at the implication that there had been an embargo in the first place - which of course, there had, but not by any fault of Henry’s or Regina’s. 

 

“He volunteered,” Regina said seriously, letting her head turn to look at Emma appraisingly. “And I’m sitting here now, aren’t I?”

 

“Guess it worked,” Emma said, and Regina made a small noise of superior triumph in the back of her throat. “Sorry. It wasn’t you I was avoiding.”

 

But Regina was looking at her understandingly. “I think I know  _ that _ feeling,” she murmured. “I was just worried.”

 

Self-consciously, Emma shrugged. “I’m okay. I mean. I  _ will  _ be. How are you, now that you’re… all there again?”

 

“Nicely put,” Regina said dryly. “I’ll be okay too. This whole ordeal has just put a lot of things in perspective. So many things that weren’t working, that I was too afraid to admit to, or look at closely enough to figure out why.”

 

“Yeah?” Emma asked. Regina smiled, and brought her other hand around so that both of hers gripped Emma’s securely between them. “And now you’re ready?”

 

“You wanted me to be happy,” Regina said, as if that were all the answer to Emma’s question. The tender smile had slid from her face only because of the gravity of her words, and Emma shuddered a little at the reminder of what it was like to have the entirety of this woman’s focus, her dark, dark eyes glinting with the reflection of the moon like light sources unto themselves. 

 

“Always,” Emma said simply. She’d promised Regina a happy ending years ago, surrounded by blank story books waiting to be filled, and she’d never forgotten the wondering smile that had broken over her face: a tentative beginning dawning slow and strong. 

 

Regina was moving closer now, turning on her knees so that they were face to face, and Emma couldn’t help herself, feeling the tug of something deep behind her heart and needing to reach out for Regina’s arm. 

 

“You make me happy,” Regina said. “I’m tired of not admitting that.”

 

“You make me happy, too,” Emma said. Her hands had made their way up to Regina’s cheeks, tangling slightly in the edges of her hair when Regina nuzzled into her touch. “I wasn’t ready, before.”

 

“To be happy?” Regina asked, eyes closed. 

 

“Yeah. Think we’re ready now?”

 

Emma had already jumped the gun and tugged Regina into her lap, but Regina came the rest of the way willingly, legs straddling either side of Emma’s thighs while Emma got her arms fully around her back, their lips meeting, finally, in the midst of it. Emma sucked her full, full lower lip until Regina tilted her head and went on the offensive, making Emma moan and clutch at her back. Regina’s hands were buried in her hair, scratching at her scalp in a way she couldn’t know made Emma wild, until Emma had had  _ enough _ , grabbing at Regina’s ass through those leggings to pull her closer and meld them completely together from breasts to stomach, and Regina’s hips jerked only once, but very satisfyingly, against hers. 

 

They slowed down gradually until it was just their lips pulling languidly at each other, and finally their foreheads pressed together as they got their breathing under control. 

 

“Glad I finally got to do that,” Regina said, eyes still closed.

 

“What?” Emma’s brain took a minute to catch up, but in the meantime, all she could come up with was “You already did.”

 

Regina didn’t respond, and Emma’s brain fully engaged. The implications hit her, and she swatted lightly at Regina’s arm. “What the hell, Regina. You’re jealous of  _ yourself _ ?”

 

Again, Regina didn’t respond with words, but Emma’s mouth was really too busy to offer a token protest beyond a muffled  _ mmmph.  _ She was smiling idiotically but the time they pulled away again.

 

“Guess so,” Emma said. Regina blinked dazedly at her. “We’re ready,” Emma clarified. 

 

“Hmm,” Regina said, a slow smile spreading across her face. Tentative beginnings and new promises. “I guess we are.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Thing Called Future [Art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15671583) by [TuuPii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TuuPii/pseuds/TuuPii)




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